Awkward...

Awkward. That is the best singular word I can use to describe the 57-minute flight I just walked off of. It is almost that airlines in today’s society are designing trips for passengers under that fashion only. Awkward. Nothing but.

Airlines initiate your trip in that manner from the very beginning as you are removing your belt, shoes, watch, earrings, glasses, necklaces, fillings, pacemakers and metal plates from the left side of your head before you pass through the doorway of death and its annoying beep, pointing you out to the rest of the airport that you could possibly have a handgun made out of tinfoil gun wrappers. Awkward. Yes, I know.

This continues on as you are then awarded the 18 inches of cubic space that they call your seat. I honestly don’t know how some people fit in those things, myself included! As you try and proportionate your body into some difficult yet random position you have an upset Grandmother giving dirty looks from behind as you keep bumping her seat, meanwhile a drop dead gorgeous girl from your Comm 3220 class laughs at your clumsiness in the seat next to you.

Move to facing the front of the plane while the stewardess babbles on a hundred words a second of instruction into the microphone that no one on the entire plane including the pilot himself has any clue what she just said about keeping your table in the upright position with your seatbelt fashioned as we take off. Or did she say please label tight possums with a deep welt in passions sake? Is this flight getting even more awkward?

Try and shift your focus to a more positive direction than in your crammed position, pull out the SkyMall magazine in hopes of finding some kind of neat gadget or device that can entertain hopes of purchasing for at least 7 minutes. While thumbing through the pages you only feel more and more awkward looking at things such as a neon-light underwater children’s keyboard, and an atomic world time watch that can even pass the LSAT along with telling time. Of course I can’t afford 9 payments of $99.99 to purchase things like that or a voice-activated R2-D2 robot designed specifically to keep ice cream from melting!

There is something even more awkward about sitting on an airplane; opening up to the person next to you. It is beyond me why you do not care one bit about personal seclusion and privacy while on a flight. For some reason every single awkward individual imaginable wants to tell the most tiny and unimportant life stories to you while in the air. So thank you Gail, from Nibley, who lives on a farm with llama’s and alpaca’s, while her husband with 12 fingers works on writing a book about the history of the toothpick. My life is more enriched now because of that information.

Awkward. That is all there is to it. Between the handfuls of peanuts, cramped layout of bathroom, and annoyance of two-year olds sitting on their mom’s laps the entire time screaming that they want a fruit roll up all flight long, I have come to the conclusion that anything about flying puts a sour taste in my mouth even if it cuts any travel time in half.

However, I must say that the most awkward thing about the entire trip was as the pilot was making introductions about the flight to myself and the rest of the other passengers, when he made the actual statement, and I quote.

“I’m going to turn the time over to your smoking hot flight attendant Sammy right now.”

I looked up from where I was sitting anticipating what the pilot had previewed, when as I did, I stared right back into Sammy’s eyes gazing longfully into mine.

Sammy was a guy.