Flying by the Seat of My Pants: Flight Attendant Adventures on a Wing and a Prayer Read Online Free PDF

people who live in Juneau are there to get away from other people—especially those of us who live in the Lower 48.
    It was not unusual for us to have “back-country residents” among our passengers on these flights from Juneau to Seattle. One day we boarded a guy who looked like he hadn’t been out of the back country in years. In fact he told us that this was his first trip in thirty years to the Lower 48. He had to go settle a financial dispute in his family.
    Not only had the man been away from the Lower 48 for thirty years, he also appeared to have been away from all showers, combs, or toothbrushes. But our job is not to judge, just to serve. So as soon as everyone was seated, the other flight attendant, whom I’ll call Gini, and I prepared to serve lunch. We noticed Back-Country Juneau Man was sitting right across from our galley. We also noticed he was loudly hawking “loogies.” A loogie, for anyone who isn’t familiar with the term, is excess mucus that people cough up from deep within their lungs. They hack and cough and then spit. This man was using his beverage cup as his loogie container.
    Gini (who was the sweetest flight attendant I’ve ever flown with) was the galley person setting up the trays. She had the oven doors open and alternated between kneeling to the bins below the ovens to get out set-up trays and standing to complete the trays with hot entrées. Then I would pick up the trays and run them out to the passengers. This was in the days of not only hot meals but a choice of entrée. We actually asked Coach passengers if they wanted “chicken or beef.”
    We were busy, so it’s understandable that neither of us saw Back-Country Juneau Man get up from his seat and set his loogie beverage cup right next to Gini’s cup on the back counter of the galley.
    Gini was too busy to look behind her as she reached for her beverage. She took a big swig and realized something was verywrong. She looked down at the cup in her hand and realized she was not holding her own beverage. Just then Back-Country Juneau Man walked up looking for what he had left on the counter.
    The service was detained for a moment while Gini ran into the bathroom and tried to vomit. She wasn’t successful and asked me if I had any antiseptic mouthwash. I didn’t.
    We monitored Gini’s health for weeks after that, but she never got sick. Some flight attendants even suggested the loogie drink was a sort of vaccine. Gini was not amused.
    After that experience, we never let our beverage cups out of our sight.

C HAPTER 15
     

     

Marry Me, Fly Free—on a Seat-Available Basis
     
    T he night I met my husband, I was one step away from buying a T-shirt that read, “Marry Me—Fly Free.”
    I thought we flight attendants needed to advertise this benefit of our job. I wanted to wear that shirt to a big party with sixty or so flight attendants and then invite a bunch of single guys. We’d meet and mingle, and maybe Mr. Right would be there. In an odd twist of fate, that is sort of how Imet my husband. Except I wasn’t wearing the T-shirt, and I wasn’t the one who arranged the party.
    Just before I met Tom, my entire family had turned against me for trusting God to bring me Mr. Right. “You’re wasting the best years of your life,” my grandmother had said. “You can’t trust God for things like this!”
    But I’d read a verse that essentially said if I trusted in God with all my heart, he would direct my paths.
    I told that to my grandmother, and she said, “He’s directing you down the path of loneliness. Do you want that? You’re going to end up a shriveled old woman with no one to love you. Do you want that?”
    I didn’t want that, but neither did I want to become a casualty in the epidemic of divorces in my family. “I just have this idea,” I said to my grandmother, “that if I leave the choice to God, he will direct me to Mr. Right. It’s called trusting in the Lord.”
    “It’s called blind faith, and