C'est Nice

So, they woke us up about a half an hour ago. I think I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours, three maximum. My watch, still on New York time, said 1:21, but there was already a sharp stripe of impending sunrise on the otherwise dark horizon. They woke us up to feed us, according to the stewardess, we’re another forty-five minutes out. I think I caught the coastline even though it was still pretty dark when we passed over it—or at least, when I think we passed over it. It’s kind of strange, flying over an entire ocean on the dark. If I didn’t know it was there, I wouldn’t know it was there… you know?

Sorry, I’m rambling, I know. Now that they’ve woken us, my mind has nothing to do but run circles around itself. There’s not quite enough battery power for another TV show, and there’s not quite enough brain power for reading or anything. I’d be content to sit here and think about nothing, but my brain’s like OR I could sit here yammering completely inane blabber until we arrive and you force me to eke out enough French to get you from the airport into the city. And at that point, I’m pretty much up against a wall, so I sit back and let the inanity wash over me. What, exactly, has it amounted to, you ask?

It seems that the primary objective in waking us was to feed us (why exactly I feel like cattle is not explicitly obvious to me at the moment, although I do have a not wholly unpleasant image of a redesigned airplane complete with feeding troughs… where was I?) but since we’ve already had our quota of one hot meal per flight, we’re left to contend with whatever preservative-tastic “snack” our corporate friends at American have dreamed up. I’m handed a box that says “crackers & spreads” written in stylishly lowercase letters in one corner, an American Airlines logo emblazoned in the opposite corner. Another question: why do airlines consistently insist on putting their logos on that which we like least about the airline? If I were American Airlines, I would not want to be associated with this pathetic box posing as a breakfast, just as I wouldn’t want my logo within five feet of the small Styrofoam cup of coffee I was handed, which suggested that a coffee bean had offered itself to the lukewarm water, but was politely turned down (“Oh, no, no, I couldn’t”). The box itself is a triple threat of Wheat Thins and some suspiciously cheerful substance described only as “Sun Butter,” a packet of Fig Newtons paired with some Knott’s berry farm jelly and a small box of raisins. And a moist towellette, which I now realize I forgot to use… damn! Anyway, The raisins were good, and the Fig Newtons and jelly surprisingly tasty, although looking back on it, it’s kind of a jelly on top of more jelly, with something called a Newton in between. The Sun Butter has been my real food for thought. The color of it reminded me fairly eerily of (and forgive me, Anna) some of my sister’s more challenging bowel movements during her diaper days. Challenging, of course, refers to my own involvement in the clean-up process, but perhaps no further explanation is needed. I’m guessing the stuff was sunflower seed butter, although I agree with the gentlemen in the marketing department of Sun Butter Inc. (or Ltd? LLC?) that the shorter name works better. The flavor was reminiscent of peanut butter, but sharper and, if at all possible, more peanut buttery, as if some scientist at Jif had finally snapped one day and turned up all the levels on a batch of PB: stickiness, oilyness, that quality that sucks the moisture right out of your mouth. It wasn’t bad, the Sun Butter, but it wasn’t easy to love, either.

What really got my sleep-addled brain going was a note on the label of the Sun Butter which said, loudly and clearly, “NO PEANUTS.” I imagine someone with the dreaded peanut allergy, equally sleep deprived, waking up to a “mystery box” of crackers and spreads, and thinking, “Great: Because eating a single peanut will kill me dead instantly, I’m not going to be able to eat any of this!” And then they reach for the Sun Butter, and right there is a sign designed just for them, telling them that they have not been forgotten, rather, they have been accommodated. I’m having trouble deciding whether this should come before or after the choir of angels, but one thing at a time, I guess.

I was teaching an SAT class before I left up on the Upper East Side, an “off-site” location which meant schlepping uptown twice a week. The class was in a studio apartment in the basement of a brownstone that had been “converted” into a classroom by the addition of several plastic tables, folding chairs, and four small white boards on flimsy easels. For some reason, the guy who owned the space brought candy for all the kids every class. And for the first few weeks it was mostly little tiny Halloween-sized Hershey bars, but then, one Sunday, all of a sudden there are normal sized Milky Ways sitting on the desks. I’m about to start class when this guy comes in and says “Wait!” I think, shit, the building’s on fire, there’s a flood upstairs, a tiger’s gotten loose from the Central Park Zoo (what do I know? It’s the Upper East Side). “Make sure that they know that those Milky Way bars may contain nuts.” I’m at once frustrated by the interjection, but not entirely unentertained by the windfall victory one of my students—probably not the one who you’d expect to have a peanut allergy… the six-foot-two, slightly-too-ugly-for-Abercrombie football player—has won against the SAT Prep company for providing him with the candy bar that damn near killed him.

I’m getting the “your computer will be the singular cause of this plane crashing” look from some people on the plane. I know it well… I’m a regular deliverer of that same look. I give it mostly to the cell phone people, those high powered businessmen and women, or those girls who insist on talking to their boyfriends right until the plane talks off. Of course, I rarely, if ever, would say anything to people about it… more likely, I’d resort to a more comfortable position and tattle to the flight attendant. I’d have little visions of the stewardess looking just around me to confirm my complaint—oh dear, they never learn, do they?—we’d share a nod of total understanding, and she might even squeeze my arm like a mother who’s just been told that her daughter once again is pushing pennies up her nose; then she’d march off. This vision is in constant competition with the fear that all I’d get from the stewardess would be a who-the-fuck-cares, get-the-hell-back-into-your-seat kind of look, which helps no one, least of all me.

Sometimes it seems a little silly to me, our total fear of confrontation. I doubt any of the people around me will ask me to turn off my computer. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask the sweet old woman behind me, who had stored her headphones on the corner of my headrest on which I had planned to sleep. What was she going to say? I guess that’s not even what I’m really afraid of; no my fear would be much more closely associated with a look—of annoyance, of humiliation, it doesn’t really matter—but it would signal her feeling some strong emotion that she would stifle, and all that would make it through would be that look of… whatever.

Anyway, I’m going to turn this puppy off. See y’all on the ground.