Tonight, there is a full moon, and I accidentally took a caffeine pill instead of a sleeping pill, so there are several reasons why I am chosing to write at 11pm instead of preparing for my 5th consecutive 4am wakeup call.
Up in the air, most flight attendants are meeting for the first time. When we work a flight, we usually don't get much (read: any) say as to who we are working with. Sometimes, there is a little preference given as to where you want to go--if you've been working long enough.
Still, the galley is the stage where every F/A has a chance to recite his or her autobiography. Once the drinks have been served, the door has been armed and the lavs have been checked, a main cabin F/A digs into comped food-for-sale items, coffee (which is cold by now), and the story of his or her life.
my trip to LaGuardia was no different. I learned all about the daughters, sons, lovers and husbands of the two women training me. Both of them were very sharp and professional, albeit a little jaded.
Since I'm a sap, the story of the #2 (galley) flight attendant has been stuck in my head. It's had me wondering about the choices we make--career and adventure often do not align with a conventional path. Love becomes secondary, and afterthought. Things don't work out like we planned. And then they do, sort of.
A note: I am an old woman (named after my mother) and I don't have a perfect memory. This is just how I remember it.
" When I came to training in the late seventies, I was engaged to a guy from home, back in Cleveland. Well, I ended up being based in LaGuardia. Imagine--a little midwestern girl with a dust speck-sized engagement ring, in New York flippin' City!
I was having such a ball that I left the guy right then and there. Gave him a call two weeks after indoctrination, called off the wedding, and didn't speak to him again until--well, I'll finish the story. A long, long time.
So, I kept working at LaGuardia until Dallas opened, then I transferred down here and met my ex- husband, who was a pilot working out of Dallas, too. Let me tell you what--he is just a complete ass.
He was when I married him too, but--you know how pilots are. They seem like they really have it all together. They can take you places, they understand your work schedule, they're quiet...the only reason a man like that is ever quiet is because he is afraid he'll accidentally let it slip that he's sleeping with another gal at your base. Dallas is big enough that he got away with it for as long as he did. And now? He won't pay a cent over child support, and Even that's late. Just a total pig.
The man makes twice what I do and he doesn't want to pay his fair share of our daughters' college tuition? What a jerk.
Anyway, so's I caught up with my old ex-fiance last winter On facebook. One day, he just adds me to his friends list, out of the blue. I says "is this Danny? Like, Danny, Danny?"
And surprise surprise, it is. He's got a girl the same age as my girls. He even got divorced--divorced the same year that I did. Is that wild or what?! So's I tell him I'm heading into Cleveland to visit my baby sister and it turns out he still lives there. I invited him to our family barbeque for my nephew's graduation, and guess what--he came. Sur-real.
The man hasn't seen my baby sister since she was..15? The last time he saw my parents, they were younger than he and I are now. It was so weird, some real time capsule bull-shit.
But yeah. Nowadays it's nice.
We go out to dinner, keep in touch---we're friends now.
Nothing serious, I don't want nothin' like that.
He might want that, but I knows better.
I just think its nice that something like facebook can bring you back to your roots. Yeah, I mean sometimes I get to thinkin' "what if"--
but I've got my girls, and I've already got a bastard to hate. Its nice to have someone to be friends with.
I'm minding my Ps and Qs and keeping it friendly, but not too friendly. I know men, and when he insinuates something like that i should stay over, I stand my ground and I says to him
'oh no sir, not this time'.
But just like that, he came right up to my old dad, like he was still lookin' for approval from the old man. After how many years?
It was just somethin' else. made me feel like I was twenty-two again.
The only advice I gots for ya---don't marry a pilot. At least not an airline one. I hear navy pilots aren't so bad, but I can't speak for them. I can, however, tell you from real experience-- Don't marry a pilot."
No comments:
Post a Comment