This kid has it together more than I do at 5 AM.
I was going through security at five thirty in the morning recently and saw a little boy, my guess is four years old, standing in the middle of the airport wailing at the top of his lungs, with his blanket at his feet. His mother came over and tried to comfort him but with little success. All I could think was, “I am with you little man, F this shit. What the Hell are we all doing up at this time?” I almost walked over to him, dropped my roller bag and headset on the ground and started wailing with him. I was ready to start a protest; and I thought what better way to get the attention of the world than a pilot in full uniform and a four-year old, shaking thier fists at life in the middle of an airport.
This is me outside of a hotel on an early morning report time. The inflatable airplane in the vicinity was just a coincidence.
I really think there should be labor rules, not just in the airlines, but an amendment to the constitution, yes THE CONSTITUTION, that no member of this great society should be forced to work before 8 am (unless such a person does so of his own free will. Those sick people who prance around singing about, “Oh I just love the early mornings, the world is so beautiful and filled with potential,” should be deported.)
Yes this is pretty, the sun looks like hot lava as it burns through the clouds, but it would be much prettier at noon.
Yes, when you are up early you see some beautiful things that the rest of the world misses, like an amazing sunrise or a racoon riding on the back of a mule deer (happens all the time, but you have to get up at 4 AM to see it.) All of the beautiful sunrises (and I have seen a lot) cannot compensate for that “feeling like absolute dog shit” feeling that overwhelms me when I stare at the clock while it blares its alarm at 4:30 AM. I am not a dairy farmer for a reason, well, for many reasons, but not least among them is the early mornings.
I have a long history of hating working in
Life was simpler and bikes were cooler back in the day.
the early mornings. When I was in fourth grade I had a paper route for the Olympian. A sub-par local paper that still exists today in some form. The Olympian generally used child slaves to deliver its poorly regarded news source. The child laborers worked as independent contractors: they had to collect their own pay from their customers and pay the paper 90% of their earnings. But the Olympian had one thing going for it, it was an afternoon paper. Which means that a fat kid, with a love of Fritos and Snickers (me), could work a lazy afternoon of slinging pulp and ink schlock to finance his hard-core junk food habit and not have to get up before the sun.
One of the wost NES games ever, but I took some pride in it, because I too was a paperboy.
There was another paper in town, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (I don’t know what an “intelligencer” is, I always just assumed that it was something whose primary purpose was to intelligence people, like THAT’S a verb. But hey, a cheese-grater grates and a robber robs, etc.) Every paper boy in town knew the Seattle P.I. was a way better paper to work for. Fist off, they paid you out of pre-paid sales (so you didn’t have to, as an eleven-year old, act the heavy against a deadbeat grandma who refused to pay for her paper). Second of all you could just chuck the papers at people’s houses and they only had to be within the material confounds of the people’s property line (The Olympian made you gingerly put the paper wherever the customer desired. Some people were really specific like,”Inside the screen door, facing away from the street with no advertisements inside. Even as an eleven year old I had a place where I would have liked to put their paper.) The only hitch was that you had to get up early to deliver it. I already knew myself in fourth grade and realized there was no way in Hell I was getting up before the sun; powdered sugar donuts and Cool Ranch Corn Nuts be damned.
“Better Off Dead” featured this paperboy, who I found inspiration from any time I had a john trying to stiff me for thier monthly habit of the news.
So my sixth grade year, after having a paper route for almost two years and having an unlimited amount of junk food at my disposal, you can imagine my sadness when my employer decided to give in to customer pressure and become an early morning paper. I loved snickers but didn’t hesitate. The paper route had to go.Later in life, as I attended the Air Force Academy for college, I almost gave up on the whole “free-education” thing because of the early morning Tom-foolery. Every mother-f-ing morning of my “college experience involved trumpets blaring at 6 AM. Followed soon afterward by people hustling to get their rooms in order and their uniforms pressed for a brisk march to breakfast (Why!!!!!? Why are people in the world marching to breakfast!? Is breakfast something that needs to be conquered?) This routine let up a little bit in my upper class years but still involved Saturday morning room inspections and parades. While other, smarter people my age were still sleeping off hangovers with strangers in their beds, I was up-and-at-it, dusting my bookshelves and polishing my doorknob. (Not a euphuism, but related).
Sort of like the game, apparently this movie is terrible too. I don’t know if it is actually about a paperboy. It has Zach Efron and Matthew McConoughey so that’s enough for me, am I right ladies?
So it’s ironic that the earliest I have ever had to get up on a consistent basis, is in my current job as an airline pilot. As a tool of a cooperate enterprise, I am at the whim of the demand of the customer. So if there is enough of a demand for a 5 AM flight, I am forced to fly a 5 AM flight. My most recent trip, for example, had two mornings when my report time at the airport was 5:30 AM. The earliest I have had to be at the airport was 4:15 AM, but it was Eastern time when my body was on Central time, so that was 3:15 AM for me. That is not morning. That is the middle of the night. If you told the sun it had to be up at 3:15 AM, the sun would burn your face off.
Cheesy but how I feel.
The real question I pose to you the customer is, do you want someone who clearly hates being up early, who functions at 40% of a capacity before 7 AM flying airplanes? It’s not like I am making coffee and an Egg McMuffin. I am trying not crash (which is at conflict with every physical impulse in my body, because if I crash it means I get to go back to bed FOREVER!)
So next time, before you hit “buy” on Hotwire for the cheap ticket that departs at the crack-ass of dawn, think of the people you are affecting. Think of the poor four-year old you are making cry in the middle of the airport. Think of the grown man in the pilot costume next to him weeping like a baby. Think of me shaking my alarm clock at the sky and looking for cold gun-metal instead of my toothbrush.
If I had one of these, it would be a tough choice early in the morning.
And if you have to be up at that time too, know that I am out there with you, looking for the nearest cup of coffee to pour on the curb for you and all my homies.
Think of this poor little guy. Me and you buddy, we are on the same team.
