We open to an airport in Havertown, Pennsylvania. The airport is sleek and white, and all along the background, there are windows, looking out over the runway. Outside, it is overcast, and raining.
The airport isn't that busy. There are lounge chairs set up right in front of the window, some facing the window, some facing away. There are three people visible, sitting in those chairs, two with their back to us and one facing us. The one facing us is a man with shaggy black hair in a button-up shirt and jeans.
His name is CHESTER, but he goes by CHUCK.
He has never ridden an airplane before.
He is deathly, awfully terrified of heights.
Sometimes, at night, he has dreams about the hypothetical event that made him this way — the defining trauma of his formative years, a hypothetical — but it's vague, and indecipherable.
He dreams that there is a silver-white metallic object beside him, immeasurably tall and immeasurably wide. It has grey little dots up and down both sides, and underneath them, a red line, like it's been underlined.
Usually it's placed beside, or it's enveloping, his crib. The big object starts to move up at a rapid pace, shaking as it goes, and it seems to get closer — all the little grey dots grow, until he can see that they're in fact windows. He looks through them, and they're tinted a light blue, but he can see the lights of distant cities and distant shores inside. He can feel mesmerized if he's gone to sleep calm, or he can feel very small if he's gone to sleep upset. But in any case, he puts his little hands up against the window, leans in to give the horizon a peck, and suddenly there's this deep, burning fire all around him, crawling up his bones — and he'd just wake up. It'd be years and years until he saw a real plane and realized what his dream was actually about, but his parents were adamant about the fact he'd never been on one, let alone involved in a plane crash.
From what he can tell, they're right, too — his folks are good, there's no conspiracy to keep him from understanding why he is the way he is.
No anecdotes from family members or family friends, either. No special significance to his birthday, Jan 15 2001. He was never dropped as a baby.
He was just really afraid of heights.
We cut to the interior of an airplane. It's not even full, and most of the people are spread out. CHUCK is sitting up near an emergency exit, flipping through some fashion magazine. He isn't actually interested in it, he's just trying to distract himself — when a STEWARDESS enters, walking up and down the aisle.
The STEWARDESS must see his restlessness, because she stands in his aisle for a quick second. CHUCK doesn't see her directly, not at first, he sees her reflection in the plastic binder of the magazine. He blinks, trying to decipher this face in his paper, when it finally dawns on him to look to his right, up the aisle.
"Howdy there," she sings sweetly. "First time flyer?"
"More'r less," he mumbles, closing his magazine. He looks up at her, propping his elbow on the arm rest.
"Are ya nervous, son?"
He considers this. "Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. Hence why I picked an emergency exit seat." He smiles, showing his teeth, but she doesn't laugh. She just stares back, a kind of polite grimace on her face. "Yeah, I'm nervous."
"Well, we always give somethin' special to first time flyers," She said, bending forward. She begins to produce a long white envelope from her pocket. "You can hold onto it for the rest of the flight, but give it back to the attendant at the door."
"Uh, thanks," he chuckles apprehensively, outstretching his hand. She slides the envelope into his palm, nods sweetly, and turns to walk away. Leaning back into his seat, he guides the envelope open, and inside is another magazine — no, a safety manual. A flight safety manual, baby blue in its complexion, yellow letters spelling out the name of the airline and the title of the manual. He tilts his head, fingering the pages methodically. Safest in the nation, hasn't had an accident since '71 (info blurb says about Feb 3rd), top of the line foodstuffs, and a small white pill in a plastic bag, attached to the page. It says MELATONIN in big red lettering.
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MELATONIN:
The beginning of a flight is not like a nightmare — more like a bad dream.
There is a child at the back of the plane who is almost as scared as CHUCK is. This child's name is TULL, CHUCK comes to learn — TULL shifts uncomfortably, making little squeaking sounds.
"Oh, stop it, you," says TULL'S MOTHER, frowning. "You don't even know if you won't like it. This is your first time flying, can't you be excited?" TULL'S MOTHER grips a safety manual in her palm, identical to CHUCK's. She's considering using the provided pill, but this could be a formative experience.
"But mama," TULL says, breathlessly, padding at the back of his seat, "We're going really high up. I don't think we're meant to go up this high in something so big and heavy. What if we fall right out of the sky?" TULL spins in his seat like a fighter plane. "What if it gets too heavy in the front and it twirls around and we fall right out of the sky?"
"That's never happened before," TULL'S MOTHER replies. This is a formative experience, for her, in fact, she's learning to be more thoughtful. "Planes are built the way they are to keep the wind even all along, you see? It's called, um, thermodynamics."
She nods thoughtfully to herself. "Yes, thermodynamics." She didn't know about this stuff the way her HUSBAND did, but he was the one they were visiting. She was jealous, just a little, because he spent a better part of this year in the warm weather, whereas she had to raise TULL.
She liked TULL, of course. She had to, she made the thing. But TULL was chronically anxious and she wasn't sure why. She wanted to be there for him, but she didn't want to trip over him either. It was a hard balance.
"Thermodynamics, mama?" TULL said innocently, his little eyes full of dream-stuff. "Yes," she said wistfully, "The stuff in the air that keeps the plane up."
"Wow… tell me more, mama…"
CHUCK is not so starstruck. Though TULL’S MOTHER touches something primal in him — Janovian — the comfort is not spoken into his eyes. It’s not for him, it’s for some other little boy, who probably has real problems, unlike CHUCK.
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We cut to CHUCK in his cradle. He's swaddled in his favorite blanket, looking up at a silver-white metallic object. It is immeasurably tall and immeasurably wide. It has grey little dots up and down both sides, and underneath them, a red line, like it's been underlined.
The big object starts to move up at a rapid pace, shaking as it goes, and it seems to get closer — all the little grey dots grow, until he can see that they're in fact windows. He looks through them, and they're tinted a light blue, but he can see the lights of distant cities and distant shores inside.
He feels very small.
But in any case, he puts his little hands up against the window, leans in to give the horizon a peck, and suddenly there's this deep, burning fire all around him, crawling up his bones — and we cut to the interior of an airplane, midflight. The lights are low, except one right above CHUCK. He has a magazine open on his knee.
CHUCK opens his eyes real slowly, taking it in. No fire. He's not small anymore, relatively. And— oh, there it is. The blue tint, overlaid on the dancing lights on distant shores. They must be so far above America now, swaddled invisibly in the clouds.
His magazine falls to the floor. He sighs.
He tears his eyes away just long enough to bend over and grab it. CHUCK was reading a magazine about planes, not the safety manual, but a folksy traveler's guide he nabbed before he fell asleep. It's full of stories from other vacationers, and even some workers, about the stuff they did in planes. Boring stuff, mostly. He flips through it again, now…
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Airports are always a weird experience for you. Throughout your life, you've never really had to travel for anything but pleasure, and you've never been particularly afraid of the skies. There's no deep seated fear that you may plummet from the heavens and be delivered to the earth a fine mist of viscera. But it's always a weird experience.
It started, you think, when you first asked your parents how planes stayed aloft. You couldn't have been older than twelve years of age. Your question went unanswered, and only later on in life you would learn that the answer just didn't exist outside mathematical models. However, the simplicity with which your question was discarded forever put on a new veneer on the experience of flying.
The trudge through the airport prior to boarding the plane took on an almost ritualistic role for you. A line that always seems crowded to document your baggage gives you an opportunity to reflect on where you're going. The beach seems so far away now, staring at a family of 7 scramble to get their bags tagged correctly. The gray pattern of the floor only adds to the lethargy induced by the sluggishness of your walk.
You're not sure where the line ends, but you end at the altar of a tired young adult, looking at you with disinterest. They take your belongings away from you, and they are carted off, to be seen in the nebulous future.
The walk through the airport itself, now uninterrupted by the faulty wheels on your suitcase, is a blur. You walk past stores full of cigarettes and whiskey, of hats and disinfectant, of magazines and cheap plastic headphones. You stand at a bookstore. None of the books seem real to you. They stand in a bookshelf, more of a decorative piece than a real product. The book titles seem fake, and the covers feel too corporate. You watch a middle aged woman grab a book out of the bookshelf, its cover pink and adorned with stock images of flowers. She looks at you, and nods solemnly. She has taken the book. The bookshelf remains intact.
You approach the store clerk, hoping to ask for gate "G5". Your gate. The store clerk turns to you, but does not look at you. You're not sure their eyes can move at all.
You are standing at the gate. A pack of gum is in your hands, and you feel a significant amount of money has been sacrificed for it. You meant to get gum, so this is a fortunate issue to have.
The wait begins as you take out your phone and sit down near the gate. Modern conventions of seating, behaving, staring, and standing have all dissolved at the waiting period of the flight. You feel every minute, even when immersed in a pre-downloaded movie. Each second gnaws at you, prompting you to check your watch constantly, just to see how long it's been since you last checked it. Around you, there's remarkably few people waiting at your gate. Normally, sitting is an intricate dance, where a single glance or sudden movement can prompt a group of multiple people to steal your seat from underneath you. But not today. The airport has looked at you kindly.
Your flight is announced. A swarm of people gather at the gate. More than you had seen before, by a large amount. Almost too many for the plane. The line is, again, a procession. You are escorted slowly and solemnly through the corridor leading into the plane, and it is in this moment that you realize how lonely it must look when not crowded. There's no decoration, no lighting save for that which is strictly necessary, and no windows. It stuns the senses, and it is in this stupor that you find yourself face to face with the plane. Before reaching into the plane, you press your hand against the fuselage. A small ritual of your own. Safe passage on this flight is, in your mind, tied to the act of touching the exterior of the plane. As you enter, you hear two flight attendants discussing a flight that had occurred the same day. You pay no mind to the story, a defect in some aircraft far away. You've never been afraid of flying, after all.
As the crowd settles in, you hear the door start closing. Within a few minutes, you're bound for the skies. You take your headphones out of their case, and you notice dust residue on your hand. A thick, gray layer of dirt where you pressed into the plane. You pay no mind to it, a common occurrence in most vehicles that haven't been washed recently, and turn your attention to the podcast episode you want to listen to. As the plane starts moving, you hear familiar voices introduce familiar topics.
You are yanked from your thoughts by the sudden jerking movement that comes with a full stop. A crash, even. Something you are most definitely afraid of. A plane crash on land feels cheap, somehow. Like an accident should've at least happened in the air. You think of the exhaustion of being at the airport, and the undoing of it all in this last, crucial, presumably unnotable, moment. You watch the flight attendants start giving instructions, but at this point, you're too tired to care.
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The little girl dropped her teddy bear when she was boarding the plane.
She would never realize this.
Her parents had read about, and understood, that getting children onto an airplane would be a difficult process, but she was not difficult in the slightest. In fact, her father whispered to her mother, she seems so world-weary. should i say something?
Since their daughter was so unafraid, they let her take the window seat if she wanted it — and she did, peering out the window at the runway.
On the runway, workers marched to and from carts and planes, taking and then loading up luggage. Two laughing men in high-visibility jackets would find the little girl's teddy bear, haphazardly laid down on the cart. By sheer coincidence, it had landed on her very suitcase. The two laughing men assumed correctly it was hers, and one unzipped her suitcase — pink and glittery in composition — to place it tenderly inside.
When they shut the suitcase, the teddy bear was pushed down, cramped against a pile of clothes and a fidget cube. It stretched and writhed for comfort, and began to slide down to the bottom.
Back on the plane, the captain made an announcement. Good morning everybody, this is your captain spencer kelly speaking. we're just about to take off, so if you could fasten your seatbelts, push up all seat trays and turn off any electronic devices in your possession, that would be wonderful. we're looking at clear skies and warm weather even this far up north. the current time is 2:45 pm, and we're looking at a 3:10 am arrival time. so strap in and get comfortable, folks! hahaha! thank you for choosing to fly with neodesha unlimited, where when you're flying, you're family…
The little girl wanted to start falling asleep, but she was restless. Down below, on the bottom deck of the plane, so was her teddy bear — it had sunk farther than the bottom of the bag, into a very deep space. It reached up to grab something, anything, but all it could do was purposelessly thrash about, making weak little thumping sounds along the way.
Up above, the little girl's mother heard weak little thumping sounds above her head. Her breath hitched, a memory materializing.
When the mother was a little girl, she was on a plane ride with a famous friend. She heard knocking from above her head, in the overhead storage, and when she stood up to open it, in the darkness she saw a man's face. She recognized the man as a former captain. Her heart thundered as she tried to wonder what the former captain would be doing inside the overhead storage, but he only stared back, his eyes glassy. As if in a moment of recognition, his face straightened, and he slid deeper than the overhead storage would allow, disappearing into the blackness. She never saw anything like that again, and in fact she had forgotten about it until just now — she listened to the thumping for a moment longer, letting the feeling take root in her body, before she stood and turned to it, taking a deep breath.
It would be quick. There would be no faces in the dark.
She opened it, and there was nothing inside that hadn't been there before.
It had happened too fast for her to notice, but the teddy bear was leaned against the inside of the door — as she opened it, it had fallen on the floor, to the feet of the little girl's father.
As the mother inspected the overhead, the father bent over, seeing the little brown animal on the ground. Oh, silly, he said, you dropped this.
Hm? said the little girl, looking up. oh! thank you, thank you! She smiled brightly, and took the teddy bear into her arms. She cuddled it until she fell asleep.
The mother was still shaken when she sat down, but it got her thinking about ghost stories. They were just stories. Her experience was just a story. A trick of light. She buckled herself in, and went to Google — ignoring the captain's warnings until the plane began to shake into the air — and she googled, airplane ghost stories explanations.
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WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH AIRLINE FOOD?
The destination? The tropics. The journey? The midflight food. Let's review!
Hi gang! This issue is written by yours truly, Molly Clayton. I'm taking a trip to Pink Sands Beach in the Bahamas for the end of winter, & my airline of choice was Keystone Air.
& like any passenger, I just had to know: what's the deal with their food?
Midflight snacks are notorious for being dull, flat, & sometimes downright tasteless. But some airlines do food better than others! Keystone Air is known for their exemplary customer service, so, why not test if their food matches up?
When I first boarded the plane, I realized that there were no midflight menus provided. I understand that not all flights can be like the amazing private jet trip I took to Brazil, but it icked me out enough to knock off a couple of points. Instantly I knew the selection was going to be very small, & probably more along the snack side of things.
More points were knocked off because of how long I had to wait to find out what was even available. If your airline isn't going to provide a menu, we should be provided our options at least 20 minutes after take off, at the minimum.
& even after I spent an hour waiting, the selection was about as small as I figured. The food options weren't pretty:
- Rigatoni, & unidentified brand of marinara sauce. Correction 3/12/2023: The sauce in question is "Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce," which Ms. Clayton was unfamiliar with at the time.
- Bread rolls.
- Potato chips.
- Peanuts.
Condiments like butter & dipping ranch were provided in separate packets, but no extra salt was provided for the peanuts!
I was hoping that the drink selection would be wider, but it wasn't that good either. This is what was given:
- Sprite. Correction 3/15/2023: Keystone Air is not affiliated with the Coca-Cola Company, and actually serves PepsiCo products. Ms. Clayton was given Sierra Mist.
- Water.
- Coffee.
Creamers & sugars were also provided separately.
The presentation subtracted so many points for me, honestly. Not only did they give me so little to eat, but a lot of it I have to put together myself. As the consumer, that's not what I want. It's the job of the attendants to feed me, not just throw things at me like I'm some teenager.
The food isn't that good either. Because of how high planes go, the moisture in the air decreases a ton — which means our noses can smell less, & our taste buds get more sensitive. That's why food doesn't have a smell & tastes so hollow — because it's not being adjusted for our needs on the plane, such as in this situation.
If I seem to get more & more bitter the longer you read this, I am! I think it's the responsibility of an airline to provide good food for customers. It's the whole reason I started this blog in the first place. No matter how fast your plane goes, or how good your customer service is, what I most remember will always be the food. I rarely eat outside of my work here, so it's incredibly important to me. This felt like a bit of a spit in the face to my profession. It definitely didn't ruin my trip, but I'd definitely go with a private jet trip if I could redo it.
Final Grade: D
(Based on selection, presentation, and taste)Molly's final note: Thanks to my editor Jerome Haddish for catching some errors! These kinds of things are very important for food critics like myself. We always strive to be accurate, fair, & unbiased in our reporting, which Jerome has helped me stick to.
As thanks, I've included a link to an article of his below! It's different from my content, but if you like my writing, I'm sure you'll love Jerome's too.
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Airports are always a mind-numbing experience for you. Throughout your life, you've never really had to travel for anything but work, and you've never been particularly afraid of heights. There's no deep seated fear that you may plummet from the heavens and be delivered to the earth a fine pureé of viscera. But it's always an uncomfortable experience.
It started, you think, when you first asked your parents why planes didn't crash with clouds. You couldn't have been older than nine years of age. "It's simple, son," your father replied. "The plane scares them off their path!"
The walk through the airport prior to boarding the plane took on an almost spiritual role for you. A line that always seems crowded gives you an opportunity to reflect on who you're leaving. Your home seems so far away now, staring at a group of teenagers to get their bags tagged correctly. The gray pattern of the floor only adds to the melancholy induced by the sights along your walk.
You're not sure where the line ends, but you face the altar, a tired young adult looking at you with disinterest. They take your belongings away from you, and they are carried away, out of view.
The walk through the airport itself, unburdened by the broken handle of your suitcase, is a blur. You walk past small restaurants, chock full of packaged sandwiches, of plastic snacks, of canned coffee.. You stand at a bookstore. None of the books seem real to you. They stand in a bookshelf, more of an indictment of the state of modern literature than a real product. The book titles seem cheap, and the covers feel soulless. You watch a middle aged man grab a book out of the bookshelf, its cover littered with a familiar flag and eagles. He looks at you, and scowls. He has taken the book. The book has always been his.
You approach the store clerk, hoping to ask for gate "F2". Your gate. The store clerk turns to you, but does not look at you. You can almost make out the sounds that come out of their mouth.
You are standing at the gate. A bag of M&M's is in your hands, and you feel a weight has been taken from you in exchange. You breathe easier now. The wait begins as you take out a notebook and sit down near the gate. Modern conventions of seating, behaving, staring, and standing have all been relegated throughout the waiting period of the flight. You feel every minute, even when immersed in a pre-packaged experience. Each second gnaws at you, prompting you to check your watch constantly, just to see how long it's been since you left home. Around you, there's remarkably few people waiting at your gate. Normally, you have to avoid at least a couple of people. But not today. The airport has forgotten you.
Your flight is announced. A swarm of people gather at the gate. More than you had seen before, by a large amount. Almost too many for the plane. The line is, again, a procession. You are escorted slowly and solemnly through the corridor leading into the plane, and it is in this moment that you realize how empty it must look when unused. There's no decoration, no lighting, no windows. It stuns the senses, and it is in this stupor that you find yourself face to face with the plane. Before reaching into the plane, you press your hand against the fuselage. A sign of protest. You are now leaving home. As you enter, you hear two flight attendants discussing something or other. You pay no mind. Not your problem. Thankfully.
As the crowd settles in, you hear the door close. Within a few minutes, you're moving. You take your earplugs out of their case, and you notice dust residue on your hand. A thick, gray layer of dirt where you pressed it into the plane. A response.
You are yanked from your thoughts as the plane grinds to a halt. A crash. You stay on the ground. A plane accident should've happened in the air. You think of the exhaustion of traveling, and the relief of a crash in this last, crucial, presumably unnotable, moment. You watch the flight attendants start giving instructions, but at this point, you're too content to care.
Instead, your mind drifts towards the sky.