ED. ASIDE: “What happened to ‘Marc’s Terminal Illness?’ I have been waiting in anticipation for months for a new post! Every day, I check my email for a notification and hope against hope, that today, might be the day that I see a new mildly amusing article about flying airplanes, walking around airports, and interacting with humanity!” Asked Noone Inparticular.
Well Ms. Inparticular, I took a large part of the summer months off from flying. I am not one of those pilots who thinks, dreams, eats, sleeps airplanes. So, although I found that when I am not actually flying airplanes, and walking around airports and interacting with humanity, my stress levels are lower; my material to write a blog about flying airplanes, walking around airports, interacting with humanity, etc., was also much lower. Have no fear though, I am back in full-swing and will give my blog post the distracted, partial attention it deserves (let’s be honest, there are still many games of online poker to play and YouTube clips to watch).
People have been refusing to wear masks at airports. Fights have broken out in flight over the issue. I read one article where a man punched a flight attendant in the face over it. Each day I go to work, I have been feeling like I am playing a game of chance. At some point, it will be my turn to have a non-compliant passenger on my flight. My turn came last week.
I’ll start out by saying, I get it. I, with the inner maturity of a five-year-old, hate being told what to do. I hate it even more, if I don’t understand why I am being told what to do, especially if the reason given is, “Because I said so.” That is how I see the people who refuse to wear masks on planes. They have an abnormally strong inner five-year-old.
On the other hand, I don’t get it. Set aside, for now, the debate on whether masks are effective or not. What I don’t get is how that inner five-year-old is not over-ruled by the pressure to conform to the herd-mentality. When I walk around an airport or a gym and I see a person without a mask, when everyone else is wearing a mask, I have to stare with fascination at that person. How do they deal with the social ostracism and everyone staring at them and thinking, “What’s up with that guy?”
If I had a deep belief that wearing pants was not only stupid, but wrong. Or better yet, if I had a medical issue with wearing pants, you would still not see me out in public not wearing pants. I would just stay at home and live like a hermit and become the guy known around the neighborhood as “No Pants McGee.” (I wouldn’t even bother going outside to tell everyone that my name isn’t McGee, since I’d have to put pants on). You definitely wouldn’t see me at a pants convention, telling everyone that pants are stupid. I don’t get who these people are, who go to airports, with the intent of overthrowing the masked masses. Especially, because these people have signed multiple forms basically saying, “Everyone at the airport is required to wear a mask, that means you too dummy!” If you don’t like pants, stay away from the pants convention!
So, on a recent flight, when I saw an aggravated, smallish, bearded-man approach the gate agent podium not wearing a mask, I knew trouble was a-brewing. I studied him, as one might stare at a wild animal that had wandered into civilization, with much curiosity. The curiosity was soon replaced by dread with the realization that he was going to be getting on the flight I was flying. They say that non-verbal communication, such as body language, makes up 80% of all communication or something like that. This man’s body language seemed to be indicating, “I’ve had a lot of Red Bull and I hate wearing a mask!” The second part wasn’t really his body language but more his not wearing a mask. He was also scanning the boarding area with “that look.”
You know that look. The kind of look where a person is aware that he is sticking out from the crowd and just waiting for someone to call him out so he can get in a fight. The other person sticking out in the crowd was me. Everyone assumes the guy in the uniform has some sort of authority, so everyone looked to me as if to say, “Hey aren’t you going to say something to this whack-o?”
Meanwhile, my inner monologue was screaming, “Hey, you aren’t the mask police! You are a first officer; you don’t really have any authority!” But I knew in my gut, even though I was observing from afar, that I was going to have a show down with this aggressive monkey-boy-man.
Next week, Marc’s confrontation with the maskless man, in the conclusion: “The Maskless Man, Part 2.”
