Gratitude

Its not headline news that flying today stinks. Being in the air, I don't care if its first class, business or economy, is now a half step up from traveling in the back of a Greyhound bus. Only Greyhound buses are more punctual. I've got nothing against Greyhound. They got me home from college reliably during Thanksgiving and spring breaks.

It's just that if I'm paying a hefty fee for a ticket, I'd like to be rewarded with a little gratitude. Instead, there I am feeling as if I'm being stripped of my possessions at the gates of Sing Sing as I prepare to board the plane. "Only two carry ons, no bigger than a small wallet," the bored security guard screams just inches from my ear as I stand barefoot, holding every accessory I own from belt to necklace in my hands.

"Sorry Ma'am, stand over there while we run our electro-charged probe up the underside of your thigh." Or what about the equal opportunity racial profiling of poor Grandpa, as they strip search his dentures and hearing aid batteries for incendiary devices?

My personal favorite is the zip lock bag Gestapo -- all liquids must fit in one tiny PB&J sized zip lock bag. I love the female security guards who examine EACH tube of mascara or tiny vial of lip-gloss, each pot of eye cream as if I have raw explosives or TNT inside. And what woman, who is remaining hygienic, is able to wedge her toiletries into one sandwich bag?

By the time I'm seated and the battle-axe of a stewardess takes her turn with me, she is clearly out of gas for displaying compassion. She's wrestled with one too many suit bags. She is now yelling -- I mean yelling at the passengers so she can repeat food options by row instead of individually. Just as I've dozed off, her megaphone beak starts squawking at the top of her lungs--DO YOU WANT THE TORTELLINI OR CHICK- EN? Wow -- wide-awake now!

Like passengers on a stuck elevator, at least you'd hope for a bit of solidarity from your seatmates. Especially when your plane is an hour delayed and you've taxied out to the runway only to be told you need to head back to the gate for mechanical difficulties. This news forces steam of out of the ears of every home bound evening traveler.

So it was actually the woman next to me, the unfriendly, prim woman that made me think of gratitude.

First, a little background. I was on my way home from a funeral. And that funeral had made me think about what a short time we really have here on this earth, as funerals can do. And the man who was gone, in an instant, Tim Russert, was someone who I understood lived just about every day being grateful for his kid, his wife, his job, his life, the fact that he loved what he did and got paid for it too. He never forgot that kindness and gratitude are what sets humans apart from barnyard animals. They are the currency of legends. Which is why he had become one.

And it was in this frame of mind, contemplative, grateful, not sweating the small stuff, thinking about Maureen and Luke, and how the reality of loss would begin to seep in as friends went back to their routines, that I had taken my seat on the plane.

I was feeling grateful for what I had, even up to the moment when the pilot announced we were turning back at the gate due to a broken dashboard light. It was at this point I made a comment, aimed at solidarity, to old prune face next to me.

Let me just say here I am not a chatter on planes or public places. I am a put-my-book-out and stick-the-ear-phones-in kind of gal. I take the offensive before they can open their mouths.

I'm not searching for companionship on a plane. I'm not asking the person to let me into their MySpace page. I was just looking for a little garden-variety human kindness in the face of travel woes.

Prune face fit a stereotype, to be sure. She had trimmed gray hair, a diminutive figure, big, owlish glasses and a clipped British accent. She was NOT a smiler.

And as I kvetched to her jocularly about being so delayed, she glared at me and turned down the corners of her mouth as if I had let out a noxious gas aimed at her head. I retreated.

And then came the second sign of a stingy shriveled heart -- the Diet Coke fiasco. As I cracked my soda can open a spot of diet coke flew onto her black polyester pants. You would have thought I had just spray painted DDT in her face. While I yammered my apology, she jumped up, squinted her face at me and clucked her tongue in disgust as she rubbed and rubbed the area where the drop had fallen. I offered napkins, a travel wipe and practically took off my underpants to help her blot it up.

From there it went to my un-acknowledged "bless you" in response to her sneeze, and her baffled, disgruntled look when the stewardess said there were no extra nuts -- she'd given them to the pilot. Jesus -- feed the pilot, I thought -- lets not let him slip into a low blood sugar coma.

And so it continued as she searched for her lost Ecco shoe before landing -- which I found for her. Not even a thank you for that random act of kindness.

These are little things, to be sure. Minor transgressions. The world has a whole lot worse problems. But if we don't start by tinkering at the margins, by merely smiling in the grocery aisle or nodding our heads in the elevator, or being kind to the chamber maid who we turn away at the hotel door, how are we going to make it infectious? How are we going to counterbalance road rage and hate crimes and domestic violence and all the other ills of society that might be able to use an infusion of gratitude?

I propose we start with the prune-faces of the world and just kill'em with kindness.

Comments

[appleknocker]

Does one have to go through "security" to board a Greyhound bus?

[Pacific231]

The ill-tempered, uncivil, living sterotype of a mean old lady Lee had the misfortune to sit next to reminded me of part of a standup comedy act early in Sandra Bernhart's career. Sandra was in a nursing home and ended up playing Bingo with everyone else. Sandra won. When she said "Bingo" a cranky old hag screamed "NO! NO!! You couldn't have won! I WANTED TO WIN!!" To which Sandra replied, "Um, OK, here, you can have my card. Now you're the winner! I have my whole life to win at Bingo; you have two, maybe three weeks left at the most!"

Now behind the admittedly mean-in-kind mockery of this humor is an important point: it may well be too late for these crankly old folks to change their stripes. They are, sadly, doomed (by their own implicit choice over decades) to live their lives devoid of kindness, gratitude and civility.

The only thing the rest of us can do is not to respond in kind to them (Lee after all vented to us readers, not to "Pruneface" herself). Instead, pity them to yourself, because they are near the end of their lives still lived with incivility, intolerance and ingratitude, and show them a better way through our own kindness towards them, no matter how undeserved. That is precisely what Lee did (how many people would have seen the old lady's shoe and decided not to help her because she didn't deserve help).

[TheKat]

I just came back to Boston from Ft. Worth on American.

We sat on the tarmac for an hour. I changed to a better seat. The attendants brought around glasses of water. The passengers were very well behaved. They let us make calls. The pilot provided updates. We finally got our slot when weather on the East Coast improved. We took off and made up for some of the lost time. My bag came around just 10 minutes after we landed.

Sadly, JetBlue does not yet fly to DFW. When that happens I'm guessing American will be losing audience: seats are quite crammed and there's no in-seat entertainment. Other than that, which is considerable on a four-hour flight, they did good.

Kitty Kaufman
www.corp-edge.com

[reader110]

I, too, am tired of being treated rudely by airline personnel. It used to be fun to fly; now I try to find other ways of getting from Point A to Point B. I guess I'm not alone in that - this morning NPR reported that in May Amtrak had the highest passenger count in 37 years.

Go Amtrak!

[nainam97]

I have to put in a good word for Air Canada.

Just visited my daughter in Toronto and the flight was fine. Sure, I had to take off my shoes and display all my cosmetics and meds in a plastic bag. Not such a big deal.

The food was great, the service was courteous and the price was right. I think people are making far too big a deal of airline problems.

[Sciguy]

I haven't flown for quite a while. The last time I traveled by plane were to see my Dad before he died.

I was fortunate - the people next to me noticed that I looked glum, and they talked with me. Nothing earth-shattering, just plain old conversation about anything and everything. I don't remember their names, but I do remember their talking. I was glad to have people to talk with. When I got where I was going, I found that my Dad had died while I was still in the air.

I don't fly any more. Thanks to deregulation and ever-more desperate attempts by the airlines to make money, there are no longer any flights in regular-sized planes from near where I live to my destination. Never mind that the big-plane flights both ways were always packed full - they no longer exist. Since I have problems with low air pressure, I can't take commuter planes. Now I drive.

You'll never know if the woman next to you was a natural sourpuss or if she was going to or from a funeral. You'll never know if she had just been diagnosed with cancer. But you'll always know that you did the right thing. She may have been unwilling or unable to respond, but you'll never know how grateful she might have been for the distractions you provided.

So there.

[goodmorning]

I usually agree with you, Lee, but this time I say, give your seatmate a break. You don't know where she was coming from, or where she was going to. Perhaps she, too, had been to a funeral, maybe of a close relative. Or she could have been on the way to visit a child or a grandchild in the hospital. I think you were worn out from the intrusions of the airport personnel, and your emotions were probably raw from the very moving Russert memorial. Was your neighbor sour? Sure, but in the scheme of things, as you know, and as you indicated, there are many worse things. Yes, we need to "start by tinkering at the margins . . . to counterbalance road rage and hate crimes and domestic violence and all the other ills of society". So when we encounter someone who might be having a difficult day, instead of calling them "pruneface", maybe we should just give them a break.

[Riker]

On one trip I took last year, the flight attendants were so stressed out with passengers complaining about the delays, lack of meals, etc. which was totally out of their hands. When one of the attendants came for my drink order, I shared with her a newspaper article I had just read, relatiing how difficult it was being an attendant these days. She was so grateful that someone acknowledged that fact (she showed the article to the other attendants) that she gave me a dozen warm chocolate chips cookies to take home with me and a big thank you for seeing her as a person. Sometimes all it takes is just being human with those who do such stressful work as dealing with the public; it can make a world of difference. But I also agree that the airlines are a mess and need to clean up their act - fast.

[ibsteve2u]

I still have gratitude when I fly.

I'm grateful that this Administration never figured out a way to gut the FAA's enforcement powers, and so the airlines must still perform the maintenance required to give myself and my fellow cattle a fair chance of not falling out of the sky.

[Reido]

While I don't think the intent of your blog was to provide a venting opportunity for disgruntled air travelers as much as to say we need to be better to each other for a better world, it's interesting that such an outlet is of such intense interest.

The Greyhound reference is particularly relevant because I've long thought that air travel has become as routine and pedestrian as bus travel since any profit airlines make is going to be generated by first and business class travelers. We disgruntled masses are only paying the bills with air service that gets us from Point A to B. Compounded by confounding policies that reward time-consuming and stress inducing rushes to load carry on baggage (shouldn't they charge for carry on and reward checking baggage since travelers are already inconvenienced by long baggage claim delays?), the airline industry is clearly becoming an ever disappointing mess.

In the meantime, like anything, we as individuals have the power to control our reactions and interactions and make a potentially ugly experience into one that can be rewarding and fulfilling. Thanks for the reminder.

[Lorifromky]

This post is about gratitude and kindness, and yet most of us are responding to the horrors of air travel! Traveling by plane these days is truly awful. I am lucky in that I do not have to fly for business purposes. I now no longer fly for vacation either. Until the airlines change, I will not be flying. I never understood a business model that so obviously treats its customers as "first class" and not first class. When an airline makes a plane that provides comfortable seats, nice meals and pleasant conditions for EVERYONE, I will be first in line to buy a ticket.

[larry278]

Off, off thread-I no longer travel because of my age & infirmity. I don't think that I'm missing any thing by no longer being able to travel by air. No, I know it after reading this blog. The last time I traveled by Greyhound was in the early 1960's. I get GERD when I think of the coffee at Greyhound or Trailways bus stations. I gather that flying post 9/11/01 is much worse than a 24 hr trip on a bus.
I think that I'll do arm chair travel only.
larry lynch

[PigLipstick]

Welcome to another privatization disaster, turning a class act into a banana boat horror show.

Let's see, I lived in Atlanta in the early 80s and flew home to see family in Dallas occasionally; round trip ticket: $250, free meals, free non-alcoholic drinks, and open seats around me: Priceless.

A year later the benefits of deregulation kicked in and my ticket went to $450 while each flight was overbooked with Billy Bob Bubba carrying on handfuls of luggage for his wife and ten kids.

A couple of years ago I flew to Houston from Dallas to visit friends. Before I left Dallas, I had to walk barefoot through a line where I was forced to surrender my grandfather's 3/4 " long pin knife; just imagine the carnage that could ensue with this virtual death machine. The alternatives were miss my scheduled flight or pay someone $50 to mail my pin knife to me.

This was my last commercial flight. Considering the charges being added to everything, $4.00 gasoline is becoming less and less of a financial restriction. I do have to credit American Eagle for the courteous flight attendants and wonderful treatment. However, the industry obviously can't let this horrendous treatment continue as evidenced by the pending sale of American Eagle, by it's parent American Airlines, to some foreign investors. To paraphrase Barney Fife, "The Airlines have to Nip It, Nip It in the Bud !".

[ranger5]

So true. I flew commercial airlines for the first time in the 1980's. It was a pleasant experience, efficient service, friendly, smiling attendants, no problems with luggage, etc. I recently flew for the first time in about ten years, and it was not a good experience. The airline personnel, on the ground and on the aircraft, were grumpy and looked as if they were all thoroughly put out by their passengers. The flight attendants were non-smiling, at times downright surly. I was almost bumped from a connecting flight even though a seat was available, which left me uncertain and bummed in Denver. It was, all in all, an experience I do not intend to repeat soon, if I can avoid it. It is yet another sign of America's descent into third-world status. The airlines have problems due to high fuel prices, and reason to complain, as we all do. But the service on these carriers has been abysmal for years now, long before fuel prices took off. Their problem is management and training, and attitude. They have no one to blame but themselves for their increasingly poor perception in the eyes of the public that they supposedly serve.

[wldnswmmr]

Your description of air travel these days is exactly right, in my experience. It's just awful. It's almost as if the airlines are testing the outer limits of discomfort and inconvenience to see at what point the passengers will just crack and refuse to do it anymore. When they hit that point, they'll back off a tiny bit and call that their quality assurance level. The good part is that in these days of global warming, we all ought to give up discretionary flying anyway, because it's ruinous. Very destructive to place all that carbon dioxide right at the atmospheric level where it does the most harm. So we can't afford it, it's an awful experience and it's an environmental disaster. Bring back the trains.