“In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will automatically descend from the ceiling. Grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have children travelling with you, secure your own mask first before assisting them.”
As a young boy traveling with my father these words made an impression. That flight stands out in my memory these many years later for this reason, among others. It was my first trip on an airplane and also the last I ever took with my father. I recall as well that we were seated in the last row of the non-smoking section. Behind us sat a heavyset black lady chain smoking menthols. My father blasted the overhead air duct at her. Later they exchanged words.
What I most remember though about that flight were the terrifying words uttered by a blond flight attendant, star of the pre-flight safety briefing, pantomiming emergency procedures of an aircraft experiencing (for reasons I was then too innocent to imagine) a sudden loss of cabin pressure.
And here she produces the yellow plastic breathing cup, and there she poses, tugging playfully at the stretchy band, flashing her elastic smile. She slips the apparatus over her head, tightens the cheek straps forward from the ears. I drift away.
Makes sense now of course. I can see in the panic, through the black smoke of a burning engine, an unmasked mother struggling to mask her panicked child. He pulls at the yellow face cup. She’s losing focus. He slaps at her hand. She’s fading now. He cries. His mother has fallen asleep. And thus the child is fated to follow his mommy into that darkness. Makes sense now.
Just not then. That my father should secure an oxygen mask over his own face before attending to mine struck me, the ever anxious ten year old, as uninformed, ill advised. They did not know my father. He would surely be intoxicated by then. He would forget. Get busy chatting up the flight attendant, “So do you live in St. Louis?” Then the plane would drop. Earthbound and weightless my father would catch her, his yellow mask pressed against her yellow mask, bubbles of life-sustaining air escaping as if in water. Her blond hair floating, shading them from view. I see myself at a distance, invisible to him, maskless; the vacuum of black space sucking at my menthol tainted lungs.
Emirates Lounge. Business Lounge. Dubai.
No fan of civil aviation, even now. It’s uncivil. Gives me claustrophobia. As a defensive measure, I have developed a preflight ritual which consists of sipping myself into a freewhisky semi-conscious state. So here I wait, drunktweeting into the early AM void. My account feels suppressed. Shadowbanned. Is it possible? The notion that a low-level Twitter tech is muzzling my tweets seems a grandiose view of my significance in the Twitterverse.
Into the void we bark undeterred. I get a hit. My guy @xannysndtrannys. Does the man ever sleep?
Reposted with permission:
Xanny is referring to a Substack I wrote on the plight of the trapped man. I think often of his fate. The energetic youth focused on building a legacy, the venerable elder set on preserving his. What have I worth preserving? What have I accomplished?
According to the FED, the average 30-year-old in America has $11,250 in savings. That number rises only slightly to $27,900 for 40 year olds. Our entire society is three meals short of a Mad Max film. We Netflix and chill the day away in the milky motorboat breasts of last night’s Tinder match, then out of nowhere on a Tuesday afternoon the fuselage of your good life cracks open. A sudden loss of cabin pressure. Except no oxygen masks descend from the ceiling of YOUR overhead compartment.
Your girl gasps, clutches the collar of your Adidas track suit. She is a child traveling with you. You have no mask to secure over your own face, what could you possibly offer her? Help! Baby girl’s eyes are beginning to bulge.
Reminds me of a scene from a film. Survivors in half-filled life boats, in disbelief as the hull of the Titanic disappears into the frosty waters of the North Atlantic. Screams. But the survivors dare not return to the wreck for fear of being swamped by drowning victims. The life boat, so small. So easily overwhelmed by unnumbered shrieking silhouettes bobbing in dark water.
Look left, right. The crowd. You are surrounded. People. Your last ten phone calls, friends, colleagues at work, commuters, flatmates, your kids asleep in their bedrooms upstairs. A million mouths, a million yellow masks of oxygen swing overhead.
“Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house. Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house.”
Proverbs 24:27
Your lifeboat is your legacy, brother. The yellow fields, your masks. The sum of your accumulated resources is your oxygen supply. A sudden loss of cabin pressure is imminent. Unfuck yourself first. Go and build a grand lifeboat and if, on some future flight, you find that you have children traveling with you, then pull them all from the water, as many as you can.