Come fly the Floppy skies

Some people just know how to fly. No one knows how to fly more than I do, motherfucker.

You see me at the airport, and I’m the guy who already has his watch and his phone in his carry-on before we even get to the security checkpoint. I believe in civil liberties, but that doesn’t mean I have to be a dick to the TSA people. I greet them in a polite and courteous manner. I wait to board until my row is called. I do not bring hilariously oversized bags on board. I do not stand in the aisle and block traffic while placing my sensibly sized rollaboard into the overhead bin -- wheels facing in, dickface; none of this horizontal shite.

I am a friendly and courteous seatmate, but I get one armrest. I will lean out of the way so you can look out the window at Manhattan and I will point out landmarks if you like. I will make small talk and even converse with you, should I find you sufficiently interesting, but I will not talk your ear off. Not even if you’ve got the body of Summer Fucking Sanders.

I am friendly and polite to flight attendants, because they combine about five different jobs into one career, and get paid next to nothing for doing it. I do it because I’m a good person, fuckers, but it has its rewards. One time I held the demo seat belts and life vest in my lap during the safety demonstration so the poor thing didn’t have to bend over like four times in the aisle of the 767 to deliver the federally mandated briefing. She was so impressed, I was drinking free brewskies all the way to the coast, baby.

That’s just how I do.

Missed connection? I’m on my phone talking to reservations and getting a seat on the next flight while we’re on the tarmac.

If I get to the gate and the plane’s still there, but the door’s closed, it’s easy: Excuse me kind sir, but would you mind opening the door for me, please? No, you’ve given my seat away? No biggie, I shall take these food vouchers to the Miami Subs near the C-gates, order up a Sixer with provolone and look forward to the free upgrade you gave me because you were clearly impressed by my cool, unrufflable demeanor.

Should I ever find myself cooling my heels at Newark, result of a comically improbable series of delays, do you think I’m just going to sit there and take it? Do you think that this is when I’ll finally lose it and get pissy?

You obviously don’t know me at all. Because if I were ever going to find myself in that situation, here’s how it’s going to go down:

I’m going to make friends with my cute lesbian seatmate. We’re going to talk about Cleveland and where we went to high school. Then we’re going to drink at the bar in the concourse, where we can encounter brash young Jersey girls who upgrade themselves with the credit cards of their dumped boyfriends and watch drunk 20-something Englishmen named Simon hit on pretty 40-something Seattleites. We’ll guard a tequila shot for any young Scotsman who needs to check if his flight to San Diego has left without him before he returns to down it. We’ll take over the bar and make friends with everyone.

Once we finally get on board, we’re going to conscript the lead flight attendant in our plan to take a picture of the hot trophy wife we espied in the front row of coach. In the spirit of pan-gay relations, he will congratulate my new friend on her chutzpah and send back the twenty I laid on his co-worker to buy Peppermint Patty and myself a raft of clear liquor. I will be sipping my G&T as we land. I will drunkenly have a conversation with the lady captain once we’re on the ground, thanking her for handling all the insanity so well and telling her that when she announced the fourth delay of the night, everyone laughed at the situation. That’s right -- everyone on the plane was cool about it. Why?

Word must be getting out about me. Come fly my friendly fucking skies.