TRAVEL SMAVEL
(on the road to the
ada)
Richard Galeone, DDS
That’s right. I’m on the way to the ADA meeting in San Francisco and I manage not to hurl my first motion pill as Mario Andretti drives me from the car park to Terminal B. I over tip in my euphoria at arriving alive. After paying the curbside attendant not to send my luggage to Nepal, I drag my cheeks up the steps of the broken escalator and find the men’s room. I race into stall six and let my muscles relax into their own kind of yoga. But its just my luck that I get the only toilet in North America with bidet envy. It has one of those new automatic flushers that sense when you get up. Only my toilet has to be oversensitive. It senses my breathing and suddenly bursts to life like a crazed Bernini fountain washing my nethers so I know the real meaning of the word wonderful. My impulse is to jump up but my body is the thumb in the dike. When, finally, it stops I have to dry myself with little squares of toilet tissue while I hear them announce that flight number 26 is boarding.
Round trip from Philly to San Francisco for three twenty-two. Got it down from seven fifty. Great deal. But as I walk down the aisle I notice that the airline has not squandered on such luxuries as air conditioning or knee room. There is a look of concern on the faces of many as I maneuver my seventh of a ton toward the rear. I requested an aisle seat so they put me in 36D right next to the rear rest room. 36 E and F offer sickly smiles as I prepare to wedge back into a pinched crouch for the six hour flight. The man next to me looks like a biker with long hair and leathers. His jacket is over the side and gets caught in the general suck down as I fall back. All of a sudden he’s choking and his face is in my armpit.
"My coat," he rasps. "Let it go."
His moll looks over at me like I’m Al Capone. I free his windpipe as quickly as possible and the color returns to his lips. Pulling the seat belt out to its limit I can’t get it around so I have to sort of push myself up at a forty five degree angle, make a half turn, and hook it below the apogee of my hips. Then shimmy it up along with my pants and shorts to the subabdominal cleft where the clip can enjoy gouging my liver.
Its time for my second motion pill but the pill unfortunately is in my pocket on the other side of the seat belt. If I release the lock I’m afraid that the liberated kinetic energy will fling the belt buckle across Duke’s (that’s his name) mouth and break his teeth, so I try to wriggle my hand under the belt and feel around in the pocket for the saccharine-sized tablet. But now I can’t get my hand out. I twist and I turn and pull back and forth but its stuck. I have it in there for some time and am struggling with it when I notice that several men are giving me funny looks.
I do not have a fear of flying. No sir! My fear is one of falling out of the sky in the severed tail section of a DC-10. At twelve thousand feet into our ascent the back of the plane is trembling through the limits of metal fatigue and an alarming groan emanates from its belly. A marinade of sulfuric gas emanates from mine. I pretend not to notice but hear the words "sweet Jesus" as one of the stewardi run forward. It is at this precise moment that the sluggard in front of me decides to throw his seat back into a hundred and seventy degree recline. His greasy black hair is thinning and habitat to a sanctuary of cooties who busily stockpile a lush growth of dandruff that would otherwise have gone unappreciated. I cannot compensate as my seat is up against the wall of the galley. Say Lavee.
As we are traveling west and depart at 1:30 PM eastern time and will, if God’s will agrees, arrive in San Francisco at 4:30 PM pacific time we are too late for lunch and too early for dinner. We do, however, qualify for a snack of a third of a can of diet Sprite over ice and a peanut. Since there is only an inch between the back of the seat in front of me and my belly I can only lower the tray to a forty-five degree angle if I suck in and hold my breath. As the beverage service arrives in the rumble seat section we hit unexpected turbulence and half of my third of a can of diet Sprite spills in my lap and gets on my peanut. Its cold and sticky but I figure there’s plenty of time for it to evaporate.
As my focal distance is five inches I can’t read the book I brought on how to survive an air crash as I can only get the print three and a half inches from my eyes. So I opt for the five dollar headphones and the promise of a two hour distraction. Incredibly, the movie is about an airplane crash on an island in the South Pacific. It is either Harrison Ford or Bebe King in the staring role. I can’t tell as the monitor is a hundred yards forward and looks like a Dick Tracey watch crystal.
Just as Harrison Ford tells Bebe King he has beautiful legs I notice we have begun a precipitous descent. The sky below is dark and I see flashes of lightning exploding from one thunderhead to another. Our rate of descent accelerates at thirty-two feet per second curbed only by the cloudy turbulence that is testing our wings like they are wishbones. Duke is squeezing my knee. I let him. I taste something from the other end of my gastrointestinal tract and wonder how it got past the seat belt. Oh, woe is me. I can’t hear anything save the sudden herniation of nitrogen gas from my right maxillary sinus up into the Corpus callosum giving me the mother of all ice cream headaches. Even my pontics hurt.
I’m wondering what I ever did to deserve to die like a rat in a can when the plane hits the runway so hard that three hemorrhoids collapse and I puke into the magazine pouch in front of me. I’m drenched in sweat but I can hear again and the vomit has masked the bad taste in my mouth.
"Please remain seated with your seat belt fastened, ladies and gentlemen. Apparently we’re experiencing some local seismic activity."
Published in the Jan/Feb 1999 issue of the Pennsylvania Dental Journal, Volume 66, Number 1. Authored by Dr. Richard Galeone, editor of the Pennsylvania Dental Association.