by Brad Garrett
Pencils on night one. Erasers and a ruler on night two. A flashlight that would illuminate the Jewish star onto any wall on night three (more Festival of Lights; item not recommended for use while trick-or-treating). Night four, a giant chocolate coin. Slippers on night five. Night six, a year subscription to The Shofar, a magazine for Jewish teens with a monthly article on how to avoid bullying. Night seven, a magnifying glass and a huge pen, almost impossible to hold, that wrote in five different colors. Then there was night eight. That’s when my big brother Paul would save the day. Paul always got me the best gifts, the big shit. The electric football game on the huge vibrating metal field; mini-bowling, Skittle Pool (Don Adams did the commercials); FeeleyMeeleys (pre–ShrinkyDinks); CrossFire (a game played on a slick board where you would aim a puck into the opponent’s goal using steel marbles shot from a gun); Operation, Mouse Trap, and the most popular board game for Jews everywhere: Sorry!
It was nice. But it wasn’t festive or celebratory or even seasonal. I wanted the gingerbread men on the lawn and those colored lights around the windows and the plastic icicles on the rain gutters. I wanted to bake butterscotch kisses for Sue and Timmy and play hide the peppermint sleigh with slow Bobby. I wanted the relatives to come by all day long and continue to drink into the night so everyone could start arguing, which would lead into racial rants about imaginary boyfriends. I yearned for the red and green neckties, the snowmen sweaters, and a kitten in a box. I dreamed of receiving a scarf made by a Southern grandma, put together from the pelts of roadkill she hit on her way to church. I wanted to know what it was like to have an Advent calendar on which, every day in December, I could open up a tiny door that hid yet another item I had no fucking need for. I wanted Uncle Ned to bring over those homemade Christmas cookies depicting the Nativity so I could bite the head off of one of the Wisemen. But most of all I wanted one sit-down with Santa. Just me and him at the mall or the tree lot. He could sit on my lap, I didn’t give a shit; I wasn’t in denial about my girth. I just wanted to look straight into those bourbon-ravished peepers and ask, “Why, fat man? Why did you screw the Jewish kids? Year after fuckin’ year. You went to each house on either side of me, but you refused to enter the chimney from where the smell of latkes was emanating. You telling me you weren’t hungry? I watched your trajectory on the eleven o’clock news, so I could see where you were on the map and at what time. I knew you blew off New Jersey, but I kept my mouth shut. And you never once showed up at Brad Gerstenfeld’s. We were kids, you bloated fuck! Broken; disappointed; holding erasers and stupid flashlights toward the night sky in hopes of getting just one glimpse of ole Saint Dick.” But every year he flew right by my dark, orange house with the fake candle in the window.
Guess what? It only made me stronger. And angrier. And that could be the reason I drank heavily for so many years. But age has taught me to forgive you, Jolly Jew-Hater. Just like I forgave the Maccabees for the worst holiday ever.
(Courtesy of author’s collection)
23
Frequent-Flyer Fuckers
With age must come the ability to say, “It’s my time now,” simply because your time is limited and there are no guarantees. I find this rationale to be more about becoming a survivalist than a selfish fuck, though I’m sure it’s up for debate. Because I’m a big believer in fate, another cliché to consider is “If it’s my time, it’s my time.” Obviously, this results in a drastically different outcome than “It’s my time now,” but both are beneficial to get the most from the rest of your “second half.”
Here’s the thing: if you find yourself on an airplane, the theory of “If it’s my time, it’s my time” really doesn’t apply. Let’s say I’m flying somewhere and it’s not my time yet. But what about the guy sitting next to me, what if it’s his time? Then it becomes every passenger’s time, right? Ironically, this validates my philosophy as well. Do you think clean living becomes a factor when you and three hundred people are diving toward earth at warp speed? Hardly. So roll the dice with the understanding that there are many variables out there, and most work in tandem to harm you.
The only real positive of getting old is that you can board a plane early. Put on a limp and drool a little, and you’ll get a row all to yourself. I don’t think being obese gives you the right to board early, though. For that privilege, you should have to be handicapped, injured, or somehow incapacitated. I don’t feel that “constantly hungry” quite cuts it. Please understand I have wrangled with my own weight, but there has to be a reason other than wanting first dibs on the honey-roasted snacks.
If the overweight passengers are given the right to board before everyone else, how about the grotesquely vertically challenged? Like me, for example. I didn’t even make myself this way, like my fellow fatties. Do I not have the right to board early along with my competing freaks of nature? Do I not fall into the preboard, blue-card-bearing, physical-oddity section? Don’t I deserve the seat with the extra legroom?
I have issues with the emergency aisles that I need to air. They are designed to give a tad more legroom when needed. And I need it. If someone is larger than I am, then they should have first dibs. It’s only fair. But when I see a dwarf or a little person, gnome, jockey, Asian college student, whatever, in a seat where, if the plane stopped short, he or she would free-fall for seventy feet, it makes me think I should be sitting there. For a hundred reasons. Yes, we’re both somehow physically challenged, I suppose, but I’m the one who needs the room. Hell, he could fit under the seat in front of him if he wanted, or climb into the overhead bin, the options are endless! Let the giant stretch out a touch, and maybe I’ll go easy on you when I have to shoot you out of a cannon during circus week.
Also, do you realize that I am unable to sit on the toilet in an airline bathroom because my knees make it impossible to fully close the door? Neither do these grossly inadequate johns allow me to angle correctly to stand and piss. The ceiling is sloped to about six-four at its highest, which makes me have to curl my head toward my back as if trying to limbo while peeing. Now don’t you think I should be allowed to board early?
* * *
To my girlfriend’s disdain, I have zero desire to see the world. My apathy toward travel only increases with age. I just hate to fly. Or pack. Or unpack. Or wait until Sven decides whether I’m good enough to enter his stupid country. I realize it could be the twenty years I spent traveling around the country begging for yuks, that created this “bah-humfuck” attitude, but whatever. Most folks I know think I’m insane and tell me “the world has so much to offer,” but in my not so humble opinion, there are no places that I feel are worth more than a five-hour flight and all the inconveniences and dread that accompany travel.
It doesn’t help that I’m not very patient, and I’m spoiled. I don’t like people looking through my shit, taking my cologne, asking me to take off my belt, or questioning my license photo. I’m a true believer in the comforts of home, and if “their” bed isn’t as comfy as mine or the food isn’t as good as the food at the places in my neighborhood, why go anywhere? If it were up to me, Columbus never would have discovered America, and look how much happier the Indians would have been, not to mention the French.
I do love architecture and museums, but I’m mainly a foodie. That’s why I love New York. Five hours from L.A. Yes, there are much older buildings and better museums across the globe with astounding history, but those are often accompanied by shitty plumbing, unwashed vegetables, tiny accommodations, smelly cabbies, and languages I don’t understand or want to learn. Again, smelly cabbie, only five hours away in New York.
I realize this sounds ignorant and boring to many, and that’s okay. But if life is about the journey and not the destination, then travel is even more of a pant-load. If you’re inclined to see the Alps, good luck to you, just please don’t be the asshole who orders sushi at the airport. I see this way too often. If the friggin’ hot dogs are questionable, what makes you think the ahi is the better move? Remember, f
ood at an airport could never make it on its own on the outside. In other words, when was the last time you saw a Board of Health rating at an airport foodery? Probably never.
In my opinion, the fucked-up airlines have ruined travel. Period. The airlines are nothing more than the airborne division of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Most of the employees don’t want to be there, and we’re stuck with them for hours at a time while we’re forced to abide by their asinine rules. And what the hell happened to the lovely stewardesses? You know, the eye candy to take your mind off the dim reality that you’re floating thirty-five thousand feet above the ground in a very heavy steel tube that could be taken out at any time by a flock of fucking birds. To this day, I refuse to believe that no one has come up with a . . . I don’t know, “bird guard” to keep those bastards from flying into the engines of a jet. You can hit twelve geese in a Prius and keep on going, why can’t the Airbus make it through some gulls?
Stewardesses have been corporately extinct and replaced by a lower, inexpensive, unattractive species known as the “flight attendant” or “Sky Hag.” In this new world of aeronautic service, the guys are prettier than the gals, and the gals are barely, well, gals. They’re usually postmenopausal heifers battling dementia who seem to juggle anger management and control issues brilliantly.
I’m writing this very chapter onboard a dumbo-jumbo jet bound for the East Coast. (I won’t say which airline, but their initials stand for: Don’t Even Leave The Airport.) A one-way first-class seat costs twenty-two hundred dollars, there’s no Internet, the electrical outlets are nonfunctioning in all the seats, and the movie won’t start. In 2014. And just a few minutes earlier, the following actually happened.
The flight attendant is about seventy if she’s a day, and she’s giving that tired announcement right before takeoff that no one listens to. She seems kind of hammered, as if she’s hit a couple of those minis from the rickety beverage cart. She slurs here and there, then repeats one part of the announcement. The folks start looking at each other, and I decide I’m going to open my giant piehole and ask the other flight attendant, the buff and tanned Philippe, if perchance his husky counterpart is hitting the sauce. After all, we may need her assistance in an emergency, right? So I ask Phillip with an E if Delores is drunk. And he throws me a look that only a gay man can and replies, “She’s had a stroke.”
All of a sudden “drunk” is sounding much better. I’m sorry she had a stroke, truly. And I wish her a speedy recovery. But maybe she shouldn’t be on the fuckin’ plane giving directions and showing us how the oxygen masks work when she should be the one hitting off the tank. I guess we can thank the airline union for that one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a staunch American and I support our unions, but occasionally, they lose their sense of propriety and common sense. Sometimes you just have to thin out the herd, people. Some jobs don’t mesh well with age, like anything involving moving machinery or unfurling evacuation slides. Or counting. Or hand-eye coordination, including fencing, origami, or bullfighting.
The same goes for cocktail waitresses. One of the oldest casinos in Vegas, I won’t say which (rhymes with “beavers”), refuses to cut loose their elderly servers. Again, I’m all for old folks working, but if I want to see Grandma with her tits hanging out of a mini-toga, I’ll go to Boca Raton.
I think flight attendants have this odd need to feel important (like DMV employees), when in reality, they know they’re merely servers in the sky. Why are they so worried about my cell phone? This piece of crap can barely make a call when I’m on earth, how the hell is it going to interfere with their high-tech communication equipment in the cockpit? And don’t get me started with the chair having to be “in the full upright position.” What’s that rationale? The wildebeest usually wakes you an hour before you have to land in order to “put your chair up.”
“Why?” I once questioned when I was awakened for no reason.
“It’s for your safety.” She smiled.
“Explain to me the thinking behind that theory,” I said.
“It’s a regulation. For your safety.”
“But how? How am I safer in my chair if it’s barely tilted the other direction?”
“Shall I get the sky marshal to explain it?” she countered.
“You still have those? If you really want to be a crime fighter, why don’t you play fifty questions with the guy in the turban and leave my friggin’ chair alone?”
My point is, I’m a dick. My second point is: I guess if you’re about to crash, you want to have your seat straight up instead of slightly angled by two inches. Am I the only one worried about the domino theory? It’s for our safety, and some putz with an aeronautics PhD from MIT says so. I can only assume that after a plane crashes, all the different government agencies investigating gather around and try to figure out: “Who had their chair in the upright position? The black box can wait.”
As you know, I only have a high school education, but if I had to pick one chair position over the other, I would definitely go with “reclined.” Those passengers who do adjust to an upright position are obviously taller in their seats, thereby becoming more vulnerable to decapitation should the nose of the plane peel back upon impact, sending shards of debris through the fuselage. If I were reclined, all of that shit would miss me, including the unexpected fireball finale as it flies down the aisle. Who’s the survivor now, bitches?
And if I have to listen to one more flight attendant bullshitting me about using my seat cushion as a flotation device, I might tape down my Sky Hag call button for the remainder of the voyage. I believe, in our lifetime, we have seen enough stories on the news about water landings. Have you ever, once, seen a passenger floating on his seat? Ever? Of course not. You know why? Because it doesn’t fucking work.
The airlines are such rip-offs that even after you’ve paid their exorbitant ticket prices, they still find ways to nickel-and-dime you to death. Extra luggage fees? What the hell is that about? The planes are getting larger and better equipped, so why the up-your-ass charge for overweight bags? Or extra bags? Are a dozen extra bags per flight really going to send the plane into a nosedive? If you pay for one of those ridiculously overinflated first-class tickets, shouldn’t an extra bag or two be no problem? If they’re worried about the actual cargo weight of the aircraft, ax three of the Sky Hags, and there’s your twelve hundred pounds of free luggage. Or maybe two of those pre-boarders.
What about that insane game the luggage handlers make you play at curbside? “Oh, Mr. Garrett, one bag is fourteen pounds overweight. It’ll save you fifty dollars if you can move some of the articles from this bag into that lighter bag.” Huh? Sure, there’s nothing I like better than opening my luggage on a filthy sidewalk so I can move my personal articles from one suitcase to another. And who cares if everyone in line gets a look at my ball-huggers with the little windmills on them, right? See, these airlines know exactly what they’re doing. You pay the extra fifty bucks to spare yourself or your traveling partner that very humiliation.
My girlfriend came up with a dandy idea to keep the baggage handlers from ever stealing her high-end red-bottomed stripper heels. I never thought this was a frequently stolen item, but with what they cost, I figured maybe she was onto something. She put the left shoes in one piece of checked baggage and the right shoes in the other. This would supposedly keep them from being stolen. I promise you, she’s smarter than I am and graduated with honors from McGill University, but this logic baffled the shit out of me. I have a feeling you’re way ahead of me already, so I won’t belabor the “strategy.”
Unfortunately, one bag didn’t make the connection and somehow ended up in Cincinnati as we arrived in Miami. Now my lovely lady-caller was stuck with five left shoes. Not a huge problem if you’re Paul McCartney’s ex-wife; I won’t lie, I do find a subtle limp a bit sexy, but only if she wears an outfit that can pull it off. Unfortunately, Izzy’s Jack Sparrow getup was at the cleaner’s, so we were fucked.
Nowadays
, even with all of our technology, there are times when they can’t find the damn plane after a crash. That’s because our globe is 70 percent water. And planes don’t float, they fly. Usually. So if I know we’re diving nose-first at 300 mph into the drink, I’m grabbing hold of the fat-ass stewardess, because she has a better chance of floating than that piece-of-crap foam cushion with the fake Navajo print. You can follow my big Jew ass off the plane, because the meek don’t have a chance once those Costco oxygen masks pop from the overhead. Never seen one of those up close, but they better come with diapers tied to them.
As a side note, did you ever notice how the seat belts range in length according to what part of the country the plane is originating from? I’ve noticed this because I happen to have birthing hips, and on some flights I’m literally at the end of the belt. But on the flights to the South, I could tie that fucker into a bow owing to the fact that (here come the angry letters) the fatter folks originate from that part of the country. I don’t mean to be offensive; again, we’ve established that’s not my thing. It’s just true. Plus, Mrs. Obama told me, and she’s up on that shit. Seat belts from L.A. don’t have much love for my forty-two-inch waist. New York is difficult as well. Both cities are more fashion- and health-conscious. But the belts on a flight to Louisiana? I feel petite.
Look, I don’t want to discourage you from seeing the world, if that’s what turns you on. But if you’re like me and the best vacation you can imagine is one where you don’t have to be over a mile from your own toilet, don’t feel like a weirdo. You’re a weirdo for plenty of other reasons, but not that one. Remember, this is your era to do what you want, when and where you want. You’ve earned the right to choose how to spend your hard-earned time and money, and if that includes telling your significant other to go to Fiji with her BFF so you can stay home with the cat, your stash of porn, and that massive log of cookie dough you got at Sam’s Club, so be it. It’s your time. Relish it, baby boomer.