Decisions Up in the Air

“Beef, or cold and chewy pasta?” asked the graying flight attendant on United Airlines 944 from Chicago to Frankfurt. He actually used those words.

Disarmed as the rest of us, his Asian coworker at the near end of the cart burst into a paroxysm of laughter and frantically tried to regroup her professional demeanor before offering the row of guests seated behind me a choice of beverage to go with their meal.

I typically boarded nine-hour flights and found myself in the central bay of passengers, seated along the aisle, where, long after the meal had been served, flight attendants and lavatory-goers would erratically brush against my aisle-encroaching shoulders and awaken me from fleeting moments of slumber.

This time I was seated by the window in the row behind where the crew takes mid-flight naps over the Atlantic. The injustice of our disparate allotments of legroom had already drawn glares from those presently being offered gourmet noodles. While they were neatly herded into their row like, well...cattle, I nearly had to unbuckle my seatbelt to replace my in-flight magazine in the seatback pocket in front of me.

In no danger of making physical contact with the next row up, I sprawled out one last time before dinner, set my tray in position for the meal, and wished that all decisions could be presented in the forthright manner employed by our flight attendant.

Within moments I uttered an emphatic, “I’ll take beef.”