Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Nothing But the Tooth

by Vince R. Ditrich


She was toothless. Well, actually, I think she had some teeth on the bottom; but on top there was nothing except a flapping lip. You don’t see flapping, toothless mouths too much anymore and it made me take note. The fact that the owner of this toothless mouth was the cashier at the airport cafeteria seemed significant to me. The food would be soft, I guessed, maybe pureed. Surely it’d have to come in a bowl.

It occurred to me that toothless cashiers in joyless airport cafeterias might be a new emblem for the 21st century. They are a visible reminder of how quickly times change. One day not long ago we were potential valuable customers all, where smiling, industrious (and often fully toothed) shop owners worked to win our business, looked us in the eye, thanked us for our custom, valued us so much that they’d really watch their Ps and Qs in our proximity, and maybe even dressed up a little when they came to work. Next thing I knew we needed membership cards to even set foot inside their establishments (an outrageous, surreal and completely insulting concept, but don’t get me raving) and like some new, slick, blister-packaged version of dangerously unlimited power (“Hey everybody! It’s 'Gestapo-Lite'!) we were expected to submit to inspections, questioning -- and probably even pat down searches if the evil spirit moved them, before we could leave their dismal, mass-marketed, herd-think sheep-pens (an alarming, offensive, dangerous development, but don’t get me raving).

So it went with the airlines. Oh, how they must have hated customers back in the good old days; it must have been a case of pure loathing, shuddering disgust. If we howled long enough they’d eventually have to give-in to nearly any of our insane demands – survival rations, Geneva Convention legroom and complimentary bulbs in the reading lamps. We could bankrupt them in a trice if we stuck to our guns. It was the fear of financial collapse that allowed us to keep the upper hand after the spate of hijackings to Cuba back in the 'Seventies. Flee TO Cuba? Even the airlines scratched their heads over that strategy. But after the deadly 9/11 terrorist attack they decided, like Rumsfeld salivating over a map of the Middle East, to make a clean sweep of the whole she-bang. Fix ALL the problems. No more box cutters, to be sure; but also no more 82 year-old ladies secreting nail files aboard. No more knives with your $9 snack (now you’ll have to overpower the aircrew with your spoon, goddammit.) No more complimentary pillows – you could easily smother the pilot with it, but you’re less likely to if you’ve had to pay a nominal fee. Luggage? Ha! Don’t even think of it, you stupid, worthless piece of dirt! Buy new stuff when you get to your destination. Everybody has to pay – Nobody git nuttin fer free! Exact change please, or you’ll be escorted off the aircraft by massive Mounties, stoked into a frenzy by sugary donuts and boredom. Necessity dictated we give the airlines a few inches and now they ruled. And we had their true measure; we felt their bite. Only the cashiers were toothless!

We, you and I, travelers, formerly the jet-setting customer who was always right, whose money would instantly buy comfort, convenience and glamorous adventure, who could take his business elsewhere if he didn’t like the treatment, has been reduced to zombified cattle, an inmate standing mutely in incessant lineups, mooing occasionally to pass the time, staring wall-eyed into the middle distance. We’re so far gone that we actually hope to see an automated check-in machine just so we don’t have to speak to one of THEM. A snaking chain of weary, luggage-laden passengers might only rate one attendant -- and any complaint about the situation might well result in your being clapped in irons. After all, making trouble in an airport is tantamount to Terrorism with a capital T, and that rhymes with G and that spells Dubya.

So, I distract myself by observing the slightly wobbly man in the lineup ahead with a 40-year-old piece of luggage; an aged, almost primeval, cavernous zip-up grip of tan vinyl so beaten-up and obsolete that upon seeing it farmyard animals would gladly sacrifice their own skins to save us all from having to gaze ever again upon such an eyesore. I note that, bizarrely, it has a ribbon tied to its handle to make it more obvious to its frail looking owner, who might mistake it amongst the thousands of bags which would look identical – would, that is, were he time-traveling back to the 1960s to smuggle toilet paper and bathtub plugs into the Soviet Union. I suspiciously eye the appalling toupee cocked oddly on the melon of this tremulous TJ Hooker wannabe and wonder if I’m being Punk’d.

Bored, I make a show, for my own amusement, of pawing through pockets for a breath mint. I am for a brief moment the Candy Columbo. I then amuse myself by imagining a huge American college marching band playing a jaunty up-tempo version of “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” at the Rose Bowl. Some sonofabitch would Die! Die, die, da-Die!!! Tom-Toms thunder in response. Trombones just a bit out of tune, but loud and proud nonetheless. Trumpet section does a Savardian Spin-o-Rama and the cheerleaders waggle their arses. (I imagine a number of arrangement and instrumentation options.) I try to come up with witty puns based on French language signage. I’m not very clever: ‘Hors Taxes’ has surely elicited snickering by English-speaking prats of countless generations. I calculate how long it might be before I get to the front of the line and then ask myself why in the hell I want to be next in line for the indignities to come. I look at the boarding pass really, really closely, yet again, and wonder why did the check-in attendant circle the space identifying the gate number when the space is blank? Do I just go to any old gate and hope for the best? Do I get a free sandwich on the plane if I guess right? The airline might institute such a ‘Guess for Grub’ policy to keep us all entertained and nourished! When I made this helpful suggestion the attendant gave me a flinty, glacial look and said, “Have a nice flight” with what I thought was a tone of veiled threat, as if she were mistress of a nefarious plan that had her submissive bee-atch boyfriend-pilot mischievously chanting Allahu Akbar over the intercom just before plunging into Immelman turns, reducing all the passengers into vomit spraying rag dolls, just for shits and giggles, of course. Meanwhile she’d be safely on the ground, polishing her long red fingernails and idly humming the Ride of the Valkyries with calm satisfaction. Do I really want to even go on this goddamn trip anyway?

I numbly await a nod or gesture, a brand, tattoo, stamp, firing of handguns into the air like the reckless revelry of a tinpot dictator – some signal of approval -- by the crack team of professional security screeners (read: former janitors) so that I can move along to the next queue -- where I publicly disrobe, am probed by electronic instruments, have my bags bombarded by strange rays (and, by the way, you mustn’t say ‘bombarded’ in security…It is too close to ‘bomb’, and we all know how much of a boo-boo speaking that word would be. Even Roger Ebert has to speak positively of ‘Deuce Bigalow European Gigolo’ in airport security.) But, if I have to take off my shoes and belt how come Shatner’s shaky stunt double doesn’t have to doff that inexcusable rug? It’s all so maddening. If I make it through this gauntlet, they will eventually herd me onto the aircraft.

A modern jet aircraft can routinely do things no one dared dream a hundred years ago. It’s nothing short of a technological miracle. Its seat belt, on the other hand, is not. Comparatively it’s only a little more complicated than the wooden club that cavemen mastered even before the advent of installment plan buying. From this historical perspective, standing on the shoulders of giants as it were, this plane-load of lap restraint Isaac Newtons all, I and my fellow passengers, grok the fucking ‘do-up-yer-belt concept’ already. Honestly. To a person. The 4' 10" Great-Grandmother two rows back, wearing the sari, who only speaks Hindi, can work the seatbelt flawlessly, too. She knows how to undo it, as well. I guarantee it. Brief us on the GPS system. Or the fly-by-wire technology. Or the servo-mechanisms which replaced hydraulics. Or the Heads-Up-Display. Or, here’s a good one…Brief us on Bernoulli’s Principle which explains why this big crate can achieve sufficient lift to get airborne -- once and forever banishing banal comments such as ‘I just don’t believe this thing actually gets off the ground’, as if it’s not physics but God’s Will that gets us to Heathrow. Hear me, I beg you, for all that is holy, with all the many aspects of a jet plane to choose from, the seat belt is the last one we need a briefing on. Yes, yes, like so many wanderers of our globe, we seek portals to higher realms of consciousness; ergo, we ought to be able to figure where the goddamn exit doors are. On an unrelated note, as I jackknife myself into the Herve Villechaize-sized mockery of a seat I have been assigned, I become acutely aware that I want to kick Robert Milton in the nuts as hard as possible. Be that as it may, it’s inconceivable that every adult on Earth can’t be given the benefit of the doubt on this safety briefing stuff. But we must sit through the bored-as-shit flight attendant’s perfunctory semaphore gesticulations. “…While standing on one foot, draw back the other leg and swing it forward rapidly, striking repeatedly the nuts of our CEO…” And now, une plus de fois en Français.


VRD
1/06

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