Free My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum

“turbulence,” which frightens passengers—and the seat belt sign goes on. Passengers get up anyway. They visit the flight attendants in the galleys. They ask for playing cards and more drinks and hand over their garbage to be thrown out. Wayward business travelers amble around the first-class galley and take stabs at the same kinds of conversations they impose on people sitting next to them. “Where do you live? Do you like it there?” and then “Could you get me another drink?”
    Even as he accepts an empty pretzel bag from an unshaven, Reebok-wearing passenger, Carl, who is working in the main cabin tonight, manages to put a spin on his role as service provider. “We’re a few notches below celebrity status,” he says. “The moment people see a crew member, their eyes are on you constantly. People will come into the galley and just stare while you eat dinner. You have to watch everything do you and say.”
    Carl is thirty-six and has been a flight attendant with US Airways for twelve years. I am asking him questions in the aft galley (“aft” is used to describe anything located behind the wings) where he and Jim, his friend and colleague, have fashioned a seat for me out of a stack of plastic crates because I’m not allowed to sit in the flight attendant-reserved jump seat. They have poured salad dressing left over from first class into a plastic cup and are eating it off of their fingers. “We have a needy bunch tonight,” Carl says. “But not as bad as if we were going to L.A. Certainly nothing like Florida.”
    A lot of call buttons have been ringing tonight. A lot of people cannot seem to figure out how to use their headsets to watch the in-flight screening of Tomorrow Never Dies. A fleshy, spacy eleven-year-old boy repeatedly visits the aft galley asking for more soda, more peanuts, some ice cream. “You’re a pretty demanding kid,” Carl says with just enough smirk so that I notice but the kid does not. Carl and Jim disagree as to whether the boy qualifies for the unofficial passenger shit list that is compiled on every flight.
    “He’s a pain in the ass,” says Carl.
    “No, he’s obviously slow,” says Jim. “I feel sorry for him.”
    Still, no one is punching anyone in the nose tonight. No one has threatened a flight attendant with bodily harm or become obstreperously drunk or engaged in the sort of activity that would merit a presentation of those restraints stored in the cockpit. The fact that these sorts of incidents are ascending at an alarmingly steep angle, mostly for those pesky reasons having to do with the invasion of a public mentality into what was once perceived as a private space, dominates much of what is written and discussed about flight attendants these days. It is part of the reason that I am here in the aft galley dipping my finger in salad dressing tonight, the other part having to do with discerning whether the deglamorization of the job is the cause or the symptom of all that aggression.
    What is at first most noticeable about flight attendants is the chronic disorientation that follows them both on and off the job. With work space measured by aisle widths and hours either stolen or protracted by virtue of time changes and date lines, flight attendants occupy a personal space that must prove stronger than the artificial and ever-changing scope of “real” time and geography. Flight attendants are always tired and usually bored and, though they are required to wear a working watch at all times, understand distinctly the difference between knowing what time it is and feeling what time it is. A forty-five minute break on a transatlantic flight demands the ability to fall asleep instantly on the jump seat. They must learn to literally sleep on cue.
    But there is another layer in the psyche of flying that transcends the burdensome working conditions of flight attendants. It’s a set of notions that has a lot to do with life on the ground and yet can best be unpacked