Flight Attendant: Career of Fear

 "Aren't you scared?"  

    I get asked this question a lot when people find out I'm a flight attendant.  

       My first thought is usually: "Scared of what?"

    But 'fear of flying' is written all over their faces...and I've learned the hard way not to play around with people's fears. 

       My stock answer is to say I'm much more frightened of riding the employee bus to the terminal than I am of flying. (Trust me, this is a legitimate fear: no seat belts, lots of blind spots, and we're sharing the roads with people who are late for their flights and trying to cross five lanes of traffic without signaling.)

       I wasn't at all afraid to fly when I became a flight attendant. (I would have stuck with my desk job if that was the case.) 

    I loved flying. I loved airports, travel, and people. 

    And I still do...love flying.   

    The 'view from my office' never gets old: miniature cars driving on tiny highways, little squares of fields and pastures, a bird's eye view of The Rockies, The Grand Canyon, the skyline of Manhattan, sunlight on the clouds... 

    And I remain amazed at the idea of being in L.A. in the morning and New York in the afternoon. Heck, I still can't believe those big old hunks of metal can ever get airborne. It's like a little mini-miracle every time. 

       Still, for the first year or two that I was flying, I had nightmares almost every night. 

     I had a handful of dreams about being on planes in scary situations. But those dreams always ended with reviving the passenger, restraining the person who forgot to take their meds., or the pilots maneuvering safely through a bad storm.

    But, the terrifying nightmares, the recurring ones, the ones I'd wake up in a cold sweat from night after night, were the ones about BEING LATE. 

       They train Flight Attendants to live in absolute terror of being late. We have to be on time for sign-in. (Sign-in is our scheduled time to clock in at the airport.) We can't risk missing our pick-up times at hotels. Pick-up times are when we're supposed to be on the van to go from a hotel back to the airport. Not when you get down and start making your coffee, but BIV (Butts In Van) time. 

      We quickly learn that our career, our flight benefits, and, basically, the fate of civilization hinges on timeliness. Being where we're supposed to be, when we're supposed to be there, is about 90% of the job.  

     I still remember those nightmares vividly. 

    The fear of the late sign-ins was enhanced by the additional worry of managing the obstacles of a new city. I'm from Texas, but I got based in New York City when I graduated from training. Most of our class flew up on a Friday, had the weekend to figure out a place to live and settle in, then we were on-call on Monday. (Can you say trial by fire?) 

    We hit the ground running. It didn't seem like we stopped for about the first year on the job. So I guess I worked on learning the ropes in my sleep. Night after night, it seemed all I did was try to make it to work. 

    I'd be sprinting all over Manhattan, trying to catch a bus. When the bus pulled away without me on it, I'd search madly for a cab. But they were all off duty, or I'd hail one, and someone would duck into it as I was turning away to grab my bags, or the cabbie wouldn't see me... 

    So I'd try to figure out which subway to catch, but the train wouldn't show up, or I'd go in the wrong direction, or I'd finally get the right one, then miss the station where I was supposed to change trains. 

    It's a wonder I could function at all during the day with all the exercise I was getting at night. I'd run through terminals trying to catch planes, only to see the jetbridge pulling away just as I got there. 

       I usually had those horrible, slow-motion, kind of dreams. You know, where you're trying to hurry, but it feels like you're moving through molasses.

       Things always went from bad to worse. I'd break the heel of my shoe, or get a run in my hose. Someone would bump into me and pour their coffee all over my uniform shirt. The hem of my skirt would get caught on something and tear, and I wouldn't have anything I could change into. 

     Yeah, looking neat and tidy was also drilled into our heads back then. "Lips and tips, ladies!" was the battle cry. This meant that your nail polish and lipstick had to be unsmeared, unchipped, and preferably visible from the back of a DC-10 if you were standing in first class. 

    Sometimes in these dreams, my bags would break open. I'd try to gather the clothes, books, toiletries, and makeup that were strewn all over the concourse. But as I'd shove stuff in, other things would fall out. Or the zippers wouldn't work, and I couldn't get the suitcase back together. Sometimes the wheels on my luggage would break, and I'd try to drag the thing. It felt like pulling a tank through quicksand. 

      These nightmares were harrowing. I'd wake up with my heart pounding and that 'late for work' feeling would last all day long. The tyranny of endless timetables, and dragging your entire life around with you in a suitcase takes a little getting used to. 

    From time to time, I still have an 'oversleeping' nightmare. It, especially, happens when I have early sign-ins. I'll wake up ten times in the night thinking I've overslept, check the clock, then fall back asleep long enough to start another nightmare.

       So, yeah, I'm scared...but not of flying.