Leavin’ on a jet plane

By Pat Fule Random Thoughts

I am not a good traveller. In fact, I think I should have to carry a sign that says, “Does not travel well… please help him get to where he’s going.”
My wife Debbie is always amazed when I get to where I’m going, and safely return! In fact, on a layover for my latest trip to a federal conference, I sat for 40 minutes at the wrong gate. Only when I double checked the boarding pass did I catch it and had to hustle to get to the right place on time. Since she’s an elementary teacher, and I’m sure she has me on a sticker chart. You know… every time I check in and I’m in the right place, I get another sticker? Maybe I’ll win a toaster when the chart’s full!
I think my being a bad traveller is because I had “old country” parents. God love ‘em, they worked hard, but they usually did home improvements when they took holidays. I even dreaded when I knew they were taking off a week, because it meant I was also doing those home improvements. No, we were the family that did not travel much. When we did, it was always a unique and stress filled time! I’m not sure if my Hungarian dad had Gypsy DNA in him, because wherever we went, when we arrived he was always looking ahead to the next stop… when we’d have to get up. It felt like a military advance. Joe had a hard time “living in the moment.”
Don’t get me wrong, I have no idea what his youth was like; I do know he was in the Hungarian Army… maybe they were always running from tiger tanks?
The one time we did take a big trip to Hungary was with good, old Wardair. In that fateful summer of 1975, you could still smoke on planes, and drink… a lot. My dad did. On the long flight above the puffy white clouds, my rosy cheeked (and nosed!) dad swore he saw polar bears on the snow below. Through the blue smoky haze, my brother and I grumbled that they were clouds, and my mom simmered. When we eventually landed, we drove like hell for two days from Amsterdam to the former Yugoslavia, only stopping for a short sleep very late at night in Germany. I won’t recount what those magical three weeks were like for two teenaged brothers dragged there, but with no ability to speak the languages and no knowledge of just who the heck was hugging and kissing us, and many parties in fields and orchards, I may have actually wished for a swift end to everything. When we finally started the Gypsy caravan back to Holland, who could have predicted what lay ahead? Yes, sports fans… with my dad at the wheel, we got back 2.5 days early. Did we sightsee in Amsterdam? Did we leave the Airport Hilton? No, because my parents were worried we’d miss our flight. So, we stayed at the Airport Hilton doing nothing. Did I say it was 2.5 days? And… cue another teenaged wish for oblivion!
Back when I was coaching high school basketball, we were flying back from a tournament in California. The plane hit the worst turbulence I have also ever hit. The plane would shoot up, then shake and drop drastically. It was here that I rediscovered my Catholicism! In fact, had I had my late mom’s rosary, I’d have done a lot of Hail Mary’s! Did I mention that the flu was raging through our team and was also hitting at this time? We had kids hurling, kids crying, me trying to remember my Hail Mary’s, and then I looked over at the boys’ coach’s own little daughters. They had their arms in the air as if they were on a ride back in Disneyland, squealing happily with each lurch and drop of the plane! Ah, youth!
On our 25th wedding anniversary, Deb and I were dining at an airport restaurant in Hawaii, waiting to fly home. Out of nowhere, a flustered and frantic Westjet guy found us; we were missing and the plane was waiting for us. Deb was mortified (she’s very organized) and tried to quietly move up the plane’s aisle to our seats. I, on the other hand, apologized all the way up that same aisle, bringing more attention to two embarrassed travellers. Is it any wonder I shudder at flying?
So, that’s why I’m a bad traveller, or should I say, flier… I stress. Luckily, there were two things that lightened my stress on my most recent flight home. The first was the pre-flight instructions from the flight attendant. While she was demonstrating the air mask part while no one was watching but me, she lost the rubber band thingy at the back of the mask, and it snapped her in the back of the head! I (who love slapstick) burst out laughing. She did not seem as amused as me. The second one was when we were halfway home. An older couple in eerily similar track suits stood in the aisle facing each other stretching. I get that a long flight’s not so good for your circulation, but these two were really working out! Suddenly, the stretching morphed into a weird “shimmy shake,” where he would arch back and she would shimmy forward. Then they’d reverse this and repeat. I wish they hadn’t repeated, because it had become “Dirty Geriatric Dancing”! I wanted to yell “get a room,” but I was laughing too loudly. Ironically, these two had helped relieve my stress and the rest of the flight sailed by. I don’t have to fly again for a while, but next time I’ll have Deb with me, so everything should be fine. Maybe we can try that shimmy shake on the flight home!

(Random Thoughts is a slice of life humorous column that appears in the Strathmore Times, written by long-time resident, current mayor, husband, father and grandfather – Pat Fule. He is also a former town councillor, high school teacher and coach. If you would like to get in touch with Pat, you can send him an e-mail at Pat.fule@shaw.ca