There’s a reason why network television makes so much money covering sporting events. It’s an easy sell to watch at home…easier than five hours in a crowded plane to see it in person.
Pasadena, CA – I’ve read where the gestation period for the common cold or flu germ is about two or three days, give or take. And I expect to find out, oh, probably about halftime of Wednesday’s game between Ohio State and Oregon.
Because the flight Monday from Columbus to Chicago, and then to Los Angeles, was full of coughing, hacking people pushing the air purification system of an Airbus 320 to its limit.
Mark Knupp’s Muffler and Tire proudly sponsor area sports on Press Pros Magazine.com.
I’m hardly a germaphobe. And there’s no framed photo of Anthony Fauci hanging in my den. But at one point on the flight to Chicago there was that sense of something terrible descending about me, like World War I mustard gas. And along with it, the sure reality of the Old Testament book of Job, verse 3:25.
“That which I greatly feared has befallen me.”
The next verse goes on to read:
“I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet. Yet trouble came.”
One of the reasons I appreciate writer Jeff Gilbert is the fact that he knows the Scriptures, and when I shared my Old Testament epiphany Monday, he just looked at me and nodded. He understood my trial, and an impending burden, of our being trapped on an airplane with sick people going to the Rose Bowl.
I don’t fly a lot, maybe a dozen times a year, and there’s a reason for that – reference to above. Because there’s just no limit to what you can become subject to on an airplane.
To the point, in fact, that when I can find someone with which to fly privately, I now pursue that option whenever it works – whenever it’s affordable. And the cost is getting easier to absorb with each passing year and crying baby.
For in the back of that Airbus 320 Monday there was what looked to be a two-year-old that had screamed from the time she cleared TSA back in Columbus. And she was anything but soothed when we reached 30,000 feet. Like a scene out of Airplane, when actress Barbara Billingsly attempted to sooth an uncomfortable passenger, her mother did her best, but to no avail. Shrill, and piercing…people in the front of the plane turned to see what tragedy was happening in the back. And the thought did occur to me. Where’s the soup nazi flight attendant when you really need one? No flight for you!
Of course, modern culture trades a lot for the sake of convenience. In the old days one would have taken a cross-country excursion by train to California to watch the Rose Bowl, that or by car. And it would have taken a week. Now there’s no time for that because there’s another something to do already, come Friday. So, five hours? Or five days?
I had an uncle once who steadfastly refused to get on an airplane for this reason. “If something happens at 30,000 feet there’s no such thing as asking, ‘Where’s that noise comin’ from?”, he said.
No such thing as: “I’m gonna’ pull over up here and see what that is.'”
The airlines go to great measures to make you feel comfortable in the air, and how many times have you endured the safety speech of the flotation device under your seat for “the unlikely event of an emergency landing in the ocean.” The thinking person, of course, figures out that it’s all psychological; because if they’re taking off in Columbus and landing in Los Angeles…where’s the ocean?
So we fly, knowing that we’re going to eventually endure. Sooner, or later.
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and the Buckeyes for Press Pros Magazine.
Back when I flew a lot the percentages were much higher. And on one particular flight between Indianapolis and Denver, years ago, there was a man…and a BIG man…who didn’t smell very good. And making matters worse, once we were in the air he got ‘gassy’. That’s right. No other way to say it, and nothing anyone could do. No where in the FAA manual does it say we’ll turn this plane around and land because someone reeks of methane.
And nowhere in the Emily Post book of etiquette is there a chapter on how to deal with that man when he gets up…twice…and lugs his way to the back of the plane and the lavatory, just blending things along the way. No screaming baby or coughing in coach could top that experience, motivation enough, if you will, for 130 people to surf the Old Testament.
They should have it in the seat backs, anyway. There’s a reason why the Gideons do it!
Job 3:25-26.
The Hughes Law office, in Urbana, is the presenting sponsor for all OHSAA state tournament coverage on Press Pros. Call them today if they can help you…Ph. 937-398-0520