Suddenly American

Bounced upward.  I don’t know what I’ve been doing wrong but I haven’t been bounced up to biz in a while.  No one cares on a two-hour flight, but staring down the next thirteen hours or more, in the air, I am grateful that it came to pass.  And just when you get one anxiety put to rest another appears to take its place.   I have a one-hour and forty-five minute lay over in Newark.  The pilot just announced that we’ll be delayed for twenty minutes, due to a mechanical issue.  Nice United States pilot, he felt obliged to say that he’d “fly fast” and make up the lost time.  This would certainly never be said on an Air China flight.  And the result would probably be the same, whether someone said anything or not. 

I’ve just tested the plug.  I have electricity.  While were sitting here on the tarmac I have a hotspot connection.  In the air I should have WiFi, once were over the ocean.  The pilot’s back: “I’m just the messenger folks.  We’re going to need another twenty minutes for them to log the fix.” He better make up time.

Productive.  That flight certainly was.  I worked pretty straight through from 5:00PM till about 3:00AM in a big recline-able apparatus.  Just about all of my body was comforted.  My neck however bobbed around for too long above my cushioned shank and my head began to feel much heavier than usual. Eventually I gave up on ‘one more email’ and pushed the recline button. 

Now I’m flying down the eastern seaboard.  Should I feel like I’m home?  I’m flying over the United States of America.  I’m already here.  I already engaged with the customs guy in Newark who looked like my next-door neighbor when I was eight.  “What’s the $250.00 spent on?”  “Clothes.”  “OK.”   The United stewardess also looks like logical maturation of half my female classmates in seventh grade in suburban New York.  I know that chalky, flat, tone that mimics warmth, feels obligatory and engenders empathy.  “No.  We’re out over the two hundred mile limit from shore.  There’s no WiFi. Soo Sorry.”  Everyone around me now is suddenly American and if I concentrate on it, it’s all rather intimate, in an irksome way.  Something anonymous is punctured.  I know them whether I want to or not and they can see into me, as well.