I believe in something I call air travel amnesty. Let me ask you, if I gave you a cushioned, colored toilet seat to wear around your neck would you wear it? Would you happily put it around your neck and then walk onto a plane with it? Maybe walk through the entire plane, passed all 216 odd passengers as you go to the actual toilet seat? Stand outside the toilet, totally cool, greeting other passengers with a nod as if wearing cushioned toilet seats was as commonplace as a neck tie, or scarf, or a ruff collar in the mid-16th century and you’re Shakespeare on plane and you need to pee. “No way!” I hear you exclaiming.
Then why is it, do you think, that people walk about airports and airplanes with that cushion for your neck – that is admittedly very useful and frequently neck-saving – but is undeniably shaped liked a toilet seat? I mean it’s easy enough to take off. It can be a pain to carry, but we do look crazy. Well, because of air travel amnesty of course.
It’s the amnesty that somehow says here we do things we would never normally do and we are magically absolved of them. Exonerated. It’s as miraculous as flight itself. This is not the only form it takes. We also slope around airport buildings in search of power outlets under the air travel amnesty rule. We sniff them out like hyenas after a kill. “Look there’s one!” and we snarl and growl at anyone who tries to get to it before us. And then we sit on a carpet and we take out our computers and we charge our stuff like the power might never come back again. Sucking every watt out until boarding time so our stuff is charged when they tell us we can’t use it. Tell me under which circumstances you would just sit on a dirty-carpeted floor gripped by some sort of post apocalyptic fear and use a power outlet, outside of an airport? Air travel amnesty, my friends.
Then there’s sleeping in airports. I’m not talking about the nodding off between layovers thing. No, I’m talking about the full up sleeping, making a bed like I’m on Venice beach with a spoon of meth, setting camp and sleeping thing. You’ve seen it. All that’s missing is the Ikea rug and the “Home Sweet Home” sign.
Is it because we are going somewhere we are not known that we allow ourselves to be shrugged of ourselves? Or is it because beyond customs, through the security tube thingy, at 50,000 feet, rules can’t possibly be the same? Or is it because at 50,000 feet, we all sleep with our mouths open next to a stranger and drool just a little so we might as well abandon all other decorum while we are at it? Maybe here in air travel world we are all truly equal, needy and strange. Hard to tell. Maybe I’ll sleep on it. On this plane. With my mouth open. Drooling on my toilet seat.
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