Smokes on a Plane

On a recent flight from Chicago, I was sitting behind a passenger watching “Carry On” - a movie about a TSA officer who’s blackmailed into turning a blind eye to a passenger toting a carry-on bag with a nerve agent that would kill all the passengers. I found my fellow passenger’s movie choice unnerving, to say the least. Although I’ll give Hollywood partial credit for its feeble attempt to suspend our disbelief by casting a buff TSA agent instead of the standard, beer-bellied, dad bods marking time until their growing rotundity lands them a transitional retirement gig driving an armored car. I know, no body shaming, especially shaming someone who has the power to subject me to a full-body strip search.

Even more disconcerting was the fact that American Airlines included the film as one of its film options after its flight safety trailer, whose catchphrase is “You are why we fly.” No shit, Captain Obvious. I’d prefer something more reassuring like, “You are why we don’t have any motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.” Watching “Carry On” on a commercial flight is akin to watching “Titanic” aboard a Carnival Cruise. Unlike the Titanic, however, I’d have my veritable pick of lifeboats basking in the deck chairs surrounding the pool. I know, again with the body-shaming. Please redact the previous analogy and try this one on for size: watching “Game of Thrones” on my smartphone at a Renaissance Faire with my tongue stuck to the White Wall, after being triple-dog dared by a seasonal employee cosplaying the inbred King Joffrey. Trust me, I’d prefer cosplaying chum for Caribbean sharks to live bait for the White Walkers.

Since I dislike putting earbuds in my ears, I allowed my imagination to wander in a hybrid of literal and figurative clouds. My grandfather was a general practitioner and told me, “You should never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ears.” I interpreted this as a green light to slam my elbow into my brother’s ear since, technically, my elbow is not smaller than my elbow. My imagination shifted to profound existential questions. If our plane were to crash, have I lived up to my full potential while on Earth? Is the afterlife connected to the internet? Does the Mile High Club actually exist? If so, do they accept members who are not circus contortionists or Olympic gymnasts? 

My imagination floated into the past when I was 15 and on my first airplane flight with my younger brother. Mind you, these were simpler times during the pre-9/11 commercial flying era when we didn’t have to worry about terrorist hijackings, shoe bombers, or snakes on a plane. The only thing we had to worry about surviving was secondhand smoke. That’s right, “I’m Tom, and I’m a second-hand smoke survivor.”

Coach Chorus: “Welcome, Tom. We’re here for you.”

A lot of folks are unaware, particularly in today’s society, where smokers are treated like lepers or registered sex offenders, that smoking used to be permitted on commercial flights. The smoking section was in the front rows of the coach, a thin, veiled curtain separating them from first-class passengers and a cancer diagnosis. A few rows reserved for unattended minors flying buffered the non-smokers flying coach, and the cabin's smoke wafted into our developing swimmer lungs as we inhaled. In essence, the airlines used children as cigarette filters. Apparently, flying the friendly skies as an unaccompanied minor called for minor sacrifices, say your lungs. 

When the plane pulled up to the gate, the flight attendants told us to wait until the rest of the passengers de-boarded. I figured they needed to buy time while an airline employee located my parents and made their Jiffy Lube pitch. I imagined some guy wearing a short-sleeved button-down with his name, “Keith”, patched above his left pocket. He approached my parents, who were anxiously pacing, wondering if their kids had survived the flight. More than likely, they were counting the seconds to their next nicotine fix. 

“Hey, folks,” he waved. “You must be Tom and Brad’s parents.”

“Yes, but where are they?” my mom inquired. “Are they okay?

“No worries, m’am. The boys arrived safely,” he said, pulling out a case, flicking the buckles, and pulling out a pair of human lungs. He displayed one of the tar-infested lungs to my parents, “These are your boys' lungs after the flight.”

My dad, a seasoned salesman and corporate headhunter, raised one of his bushy eyebrows, triggering his finely tuned bullshit detector. “And where are the kids that used to house those lungs?”

Not missing a beat, Keith pulled out a model tar-free lung and said, “Now, if you look at this lung, you’ll notice how clean and healthy it is. We can replace your boys’ lungs with new ones, and they’ll be as good as new.”

“That’s a bunch of bullshit!” my dad fired back, his patented salesman catchphrase. “Put their old lungs back and stitch them up. I’m going outside to grab a smoke, and they’d better be ready to go by the time I get back.”

My imagination returned from the clouds as our plane began its descent into Des Moines, perfectly timed with the climax of “Carry On.” I watched the movie’s finale while mindfully meditating, listening to my breath slowly exhale, wheezing through my secondhand smoke-damaged lungs. When the plane safely landed, I was relieved to have survived a terrorist attack, dramatized or otherwise, and felt blessed there were no motherfucking smokes on the motherfucking plane.