Relax, It's Just a Panel... and Your Death
"You know what they don't check for?" I asked my wife as we passed the TSA line.
"No. What?"
"Teeth."
I had a full Ziploc bag of them in my black leather mailman bag.
My oldest has already lost eight teeth, and my youngest just lost her first one. With no better place to store them, the tooth fairy puts them in a plastic bag, then stuffs them in a pocket inside my work bag.
I carry them with me wherever I go: my office, client meetings, many, many Starbucks; they are sitting next to me as I write this.
The teeth checking didn't happen just because this was a small airport in Sonoma County. I have been through many major airports with my daughter's teeth. Of course, the collection is only growing, and eventually I will have forty human teeth in my mailman bag if I don't find a better spot for the tooth fairy to save them.
Justine, my wife, and I were crossing the security line at the local Sonoma airport. We were there without kids.
Every time I tell that to a friend, they get super excited for me that I'm going somewhere without my kids.
I don't feel the same way about it as they do.
To me, it's a little dreadful to go anywhere without my kids, and it taps into an old debate Justine and I constantly have about traveling without kids, which is that I don't like it.
"Why?"
"Are you not paying attention? We can die."
"We can die when we are driving."
"Well, now that you mention it, no more driving together without kids."
"What if we ever want to go on a trip to Fiji? Just you and me?"
"Well, we will have to wait until Amélie (our youngest) goes to college; then we can die on our way to Fiji."
I love flying out of small regional airports like the Schultz in Santa Rosa.
I don't mind the size of the 100-seaters available at these regional airports. But that is as small as I would go.
I have convinced myself, without any evidence, that you are less likely to die in these 100-seaters versus those really small Cessnas because when those crash, and you hear in the news reports, there is always someone talking about the dead, "Oh, he just had so much potential."
And I still have a lot of potential inside of me, so if I ever got on a Cessna, I would for sure die.
But I don't mind the size of these airplanes, and I appreciate the convenience of parking a minute away from the terminal and a two-minute TSA check.
But anything can happen, especially when parents travel without their kids.
My wife (and others) think I'm crazy.
I think I'm a reasonable human being who was raised right around the time of the international, tragic airplane accident over the Andes Mountains involving the Uruguayan rugby team and the consequent Hollywood success "Alive."
Fast forward: those who didn't die had to eat the ones who did to survive.
Going through security goes without a hitch, and that's saying a lot because as a FWB (or flying while brown), I am randomly selected every single time.
We found a spot to chill.
We sat to wait for our boarding time, and the gate agent got on the system and told us there was going to be a delay.
The gate agent got on the PA system every ten minutes to inform us of what was happening with the plane, and there is such a thing as too much information when it comes to flying.
"Okay, it looks like we are going to be delayed, and we have to do some maintenance on the plane. Because we are a small airport, we don't have access to the main mechanics, but we have some people here that can look at it."
Great!
I'm glad that you are willing to throw your B-Squad at this cage of steel that is going to defy the laws of gravity.
Are they actual mechanics? Or is it temporary labor you found in the vineyard next door?
Another ten minutes go by.
"It is only a panel that is not closing. Luckily, we don't need another panel. We just need to close the panel, and the guys (Are they mechanics?) will use the approved adhesive."
Now, I love when people are honest. I do. But maybe the FAA should instruct gate agents to lie about mechanical issues.
Come on, think about it. Do we need to know that there is a chance we might die?
When have you heard a gate agent say, "We are having a mechanical issue," and then you boarded your flight and enjoyed it?
Never!
Even when the pilot gets on and says, "We have started our initial descent," you think, "I wonder if the little landing wheels thingies deploying mechanism was affected by the mechanical issue."
And when you finally land, you say to yourself, "Well, that was a close call."
I told that to my wife, and she said, "Relax. It is just a panel."
The agent gets on the PA and tells us the approved adhesive isn't working and that we'll have to wait to get actual mechanics from somewhere.
Justine was a flight attendant for Virgin America for four years, so she leaned in and shared with me a trade secret: "The approved adhesive is just tape."
And I think, "What is this devil woman trying to do to me?"
The last thing I need to know is that I'm going up to 36,000 feet with a flopping panel that was taped the same way I fix my kids' toys."
To top it all off, we were not sitting close to each other because I dragged my feet to buy these tickets.
Dying in a plane crash is inconvenient; don't get me wrong.
But dying in a plane crash when the person you blame for it sits ten seats away from you is a little version of hell before going to hell.
If the plane was going to go down, I didn't want to shout across the airplane, "You said it was only a panel," and she would've screamed back, "This is your fault because of your strong manifestation powers."
And then I would have to shout back, "This is exactly how I didn't want it to end."
Not two minutes passed before he got on the PA again and said, "Okay, you can board now." You can imagine my hesitation to board the plane.
We made it to Santa Ana, and all is well that ends well.
But just like I couldn't enjoy my flight when the mechanical concerns were announced, I couldn't fully celebrate landing because I still have one more flight to take to make it back to my kids.
At least I have their teeth to keep me company.
