The Worst Flight Ever Contest

By Sally Franz

Here is a fun parlor game. Each person gets a turn to tell their story of the worst airplane ride ever. What my daughter informs me are “First World” problems (sub-text: get over your entitled bad-self).

First level of play is if you are seated next to a person of girth who takes half of your seat along with his. This is when you learn to ask for the window seat so you can squish into the window frame if you are overcrowded.

Next there are the stories of being rained upon. This can be from flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict descending from the overhead compartments. Usually the culprit is the little old lady who cannot reach the shelf and starts gradually pulling the corner of her raincoat to get to her handbag.

Of course you can actually get rained on while inside the cabin. This can happen by the air conditioning system that can spray water. My personal favorite is when the cracks along the overhead compartment above the windows start spewing fog.

You can also get rained on by fellow passengers passing drinks across the aisle. By someone opening up a fizzy drink, or just plain old baby fluids of various colors and smells.

This is my entry. I double-dog dare you to top this. Game on.

My worst flight involved an elderly woman who claimed to speak no English who had a wild-eyed four-year-old in tow. She put him in the middle seat. I was at the window. The child did not want to put on a seat belt and started violently kicking the seat in front of him. At that point a businessman turned around stood up and screamed at me to control my child. The “grandmother” put a poncho over her head. The stewardess then came up and told me to buckle up my child and get him under control. Again, I had to vow it was not my child. But attempts to rouse his grandmother were fruitless. The flight, the last one of the night, was, of course, full to the last seat. I had no chance of escape.

Apparently this was indeed my child for the next three hours. I pulled out every after-school craft idea I could, given I had no more supplies than the magazine and white bags in front of me and a pen.

I created puppets from the barf bags and made up elaborate skits. That was good for the first ten minutes on the Tarmac. I made snowflakes from the magazine pages. I made chains from more pages. The child could not read, and spoke mostly Spanish. I made up stories with my eight words of Spanish. I looked at my watch. Only two more hours to go. His abuelita was snoring to the rhythm of my migraine pulses. Having mercy on me, the stewardess arrived with four crayons. I wanted to shove them in my ears and eyes and scream. After coloring everything that was flat. When the food arrived, I fed the wild beast everything on both of our plates, afraid to eat or drink myself for fear he would start flailing around again.

When my purgatory at 36,000 feet started to descend, I was looking forward to hell. As the plane settled into the gate, I decided to wait until this child was well down the aisle so that I would not once again be reprimanded by passengers for my unruly child. As demon spawn’s grandmother gathered her things she turned to me in perfect English and said, “Thank you. He is such a handful. That is why we are traveling back to his parents.” Then they vanished.

I wish I could say to you I felt like a saint helping out this tired old lady. Mostly I felt tricked. On the bright side, I had yet another story to tell my “co-dependent self-help group” the next Wednesday night.