Free Around the World in a Bad Mood! by Rene Foss Page A

attendant is completely unnecessary.
    5. Manners and common courtesy go a long way in an overcrowded airplane. Saying “please” and “thank you” make a world of difference, and you’d be surprised how many people neglect their importance.
    6. When walking about the cabin it is advisable to wear your shoes. Especially if you are taking a trip to the lavatory. I have seen a great many people going in there barefoot. I’d like to state for the record, particularly for all of you who practice this disgusting habit, that the fluid on the floor in the bathroom isn’t always water, if you know what I mean.
    7. If you are interested in “seconds” (hard to believe, but true), wait until everyone on the plane has had “firsts.”
    The last thing I’d like to remind people is that the flight attendants, just like waiters, are the last ones to touch your food or beverage before you consume it. Keep this in mind at all times and bon appétit!

Summer Sale
    F OUR YEARS HAD PASSED and by now, Bitsy and I had acquired a little more seniority and a bit more panache. We considered ourselves real New Yorkers and had a scam going with the studio: We had different people coming and going and had almost reduced our rent to nothing. Not only that, but we were starting to enjoy the free travel benefits. I’d taken some pretty fancy vacations to Greece, Paris, Rome, and Frankfurt, and felt, well, very cosmopolitan. Bitsy, too, was becoming quite well known in certain New York social circles and was being invited to some pretty swanky affairs. Of course, it was always a problem trying to bring a date home. I mean, first I had to drag him into a one-room apartment, which is bad enough, but when I arrived at our one-room apartment, I never quite knew what to expect. There might be someone washing her uniform in the bathtub (saves on dry-cleaning), or there might be another couple on the futon already in the middle of a romantic moment, or you could walk in to find four women sprawled out asleep at 8:30 on a Saturday night because they all had a 4:00 check-in the following morning. In any case it was always a surprise and usually a lot of fun, plus it was a good way to get a character reading on your date. The guy could either roll with the punches or he couldn’t, and we had no use for the poor chaps who couldn’t.
    However, some of the happiest times I recall were when it was just us girls sitting around, drinking coffee in the morning, rehashing the events of our latest trips. There were always the common complaints like late flights, full flights, canceled flights, and so forth. Then there were more dramatic occurrences, like when a flight attendant came to work for her India trip with a small cut on her finger, and after working in the germ-ridden galley for a few hours she began to notice that her thumb was turning red and was about three times its normal size. In addition to that she was running a fever, and then she noticed a red streak running up her arm. The crew paged for a doctor, and the only doctor on board was a Japanese man who spoke very little En­glish. There was another passenger who was available to act as a translator, and by then the flight attendant was lying down on the floor of the cockpit, into which were crowded the Japanese doctor and an Indian passenger who spoke Indian, Japanese, and English, as well as the three pilots trying to fly the plane. The doctor had given her some sort of fast-acting antibiotic that he just happened to have in his carry-on luggage. The captain was trying to determine if an emergency landing was necessary, but it was decided that the antibiotic was working well enough to land as scheduled and take the flight attendant to the emergency medical clinic in the airport. By now her thumb was swollen as big as a grapefruit and it was very tender, but her fever was gone and the red streak was disappearing. Upon arrival in India the Japanese