2001-12-19 � my voyage

The following are vignettes, of sorts, I scribbled into my notebook on the morning of December 19, 2001. They are presented here in an order other than chronological to help replicate for the reader the sense of delirious confusion I experienced while jotting them down.

~~~~~~

The girl in the seat next to me has a fish in a mason jar. The jar is tucked into the seatback in front of her.

�Oh my god! Is that fish alive?�

�Yes. He is in a jar. I�m a student in Philly and when I go home for the holidays I have to bring him with me.�

�Did they give you any grief about him at security?�

�The were gonna make me drink some of the fish water. But then he moved a little.�

I note here for the sake of detail that the mason jar also contains aquarium pebbles and a plastic plant. I suppose that is so the fish feels more at home among the clouds.

~~~~~~

I have an aisle seat. I can see the door to the cockpit clearly. I just watched the co-pilot guy open the cockpit door three times peak-a-boo style to flirt with a flight attendant. She giggled heavily all three times. I�m pretty sure he�s not allowed to do that.

~~~~~~

A few minutes ago a mother and daughter passed me on their way to find their assigned seats. �Do you want the window or aisle?� the mother asked the seven year old.

The girl didn�t respond and the look on her face communicated she had no intention of responding. �Window or aisle?� the mom repeated.

�Window!� I advised. �Choose window! Window, window, window, window, window! You just gotta pick the window, little frowny girl. Windows rule!�

The little frowny girl looked at me and said, �aisle.� Then she rolled her eyes. I felt like kicking her as she passed me.

~~~~~~

I have noticed a large number of soldier boys in the airports I visited today. In all cases the soldier boys are standing in front of water fountains. They are also wearing canteens.

~~~~~~

Yesterday I heard a news item about a flight out of San Diego, which returned to San Diego shortly after take off when a grenade fell form the overhead bin and rolled down the aisle. It seems that a woman stole a bag from the security check point and placed the bag in an overhead bin. It was a bag of mock weapons that the security people used in training exercises. When the woman got up to get a sweater, she snagged the mock grenade pin and it fell to the floor causing a great deal of terrorism hysteria. She is now in prison.

I want to ask the flight attendants about it, but they would probably just arrest me.

~~~~~~

It is currently about two hours into the first leg of my trip. A man has on three separate occasions left his seat in the back row, made his way to the front of the plane, and then made eye contact with every single passenger on the flight on his way to retake his seat. I thought the air marshals were supposed to be undercover.

~~~~~~

Throughout the airport, after the security checkpoint, there are folding tables. Security girls are wandering around and asking to do hand searches of peoples� bags. If the passenger consents, they take everything out and put it on the table. Then they repack the bag. The security girls wear plastic gloves to do this. For protection, I suppose.

I am not sure how the passengers to be searched are chosen, but I am fairly sure it has something to do with being brown, as that seems to be the only unifying trait of the people searched in the past hour.

Right now, there is a brown woman who is trying very hard to get all the contents of her bag back inside. Here is s short list of items she doesn�t seem to be able to fit back into the bag. A sweater, a snow globe with a unicorn that has been wrapped in a paper towel, a wok, two naked Barbie dolls, and a naked Ken that has only one leg.

Watching her unpack her bag reminded me of the scene in Mary Poppins in which the titular character opened her magic carpet bag and removed a Tiffany floor lamp.

~~~~~~

I just dozed off. Do you think I have bed hair? The seat belt sign is on, so I�ll never know.

~~~~~~

Tomorrow: my last final of the semester.

Posted at 11:05 p.m.

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