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Health & Fitness

Family Fly Day

There simply has got to be a better way to fly....

I know my family and friends are going to whack me for this one but as I am 38,000 feet airborne, I’m feeling pretty safe in suggesting that we as a country, institute an official family and old people fly day.  Tuesday works for me.  Everyone else feel free to weigh in, please. I suggest this because post-cancer and back in the swing of things, I’m also back to traveling again and I travel quite a bit.  I am thrilled to be healthy enough, even with the occasional bout of lymphedema, to be winging my way across the friendly skies again.  It’s a sign that I’m winning my life back, frequent flyer mile by frequent flyer mile.  And this also means that my usual lack of patience is back in full force, at least when I hit the tarmac.

Please, FAA, President Obama, whom ever is making these sorts of decisions, make one day a week the official Family And Old People Fly Day.  Please

I’m not saying the rest of us cannot fly on Tuesdays but airline CEOs, put some incentives out there for these two demographics to fly on Tuesdays.  Please

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Don’t get me wrong, I adore kids, I really do.  I talk to them at airports, in airplanes, you name it.  Kids seek me out, I’m a toddler magnet, truly.  I just showed Gracie the three-year-old phone winning photos of my granddaughter CJ while her nervous mother tried to convince me to take back my phone.  Being that Gracie was three, she could probably have programmed my IPad with one flick of just one pudgy toddler hand so I was not worried. 

“Your baby,” Gracie announced solemnly after thoughtful viewing consideration, “Is way more better than ours.”  At this, she pointed to her 11-month-old sister who was silently watching from the sling nestled on her nervous mother’s chest.

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“Your baby is really cool too,” I said more to be polite than anything else.  Gracie was right of course, Baby CJ is way more better.

Babies aside, there are all the six-to-14-year-old boys punching each other in the arm, stomping up and down the aisles, seven year old sisters crying in-between them and the colicky infants that never should have left their cribs.

They cannot all be Gracie.

This is but one of the reasons they should have families all fly on Tuesdays and give stewards and stewardesses hazards pay for flying with them all. They can charge extra for cartoon-shaped snacks and the double-shot martinis their parents most certainly need.  The airlines, I figure, will make bank. And leave us not forget the elderly most of whom I think should not be traveling at all. 

Granted, I have really high standards, my 83-year-old father can still smack down a 16-hour flight to Asia and then rent a car and get himself deep into the wilds of some jungle that only the Viet Cong of old could otherwise navigate, all while chatting up family on his cell and broadly describing the view.  I know this because once he dragged my mom along — some Malaysian hotel that was built into trees of all things — while my mother was busy complaining about this via satellite phone hook up, a real live monkey landed on their car hood (yes, while the car was in motion) and my mother, well she was not pleased to say the very least.

My dad however, thought this all the pinnacle of a good time which is why every other old person who travels fails so miserably in my eyes.  Plus, if one more Viagra-fueled old geyser hits on me, I am going to have to do something likely to land me in the hoosegow and it won’t be funny as in ha, ha, sit com funny, it will be ha, ha, I hope I can make bail and nobody at work will find out about this funny which is to mean not funny at all.

This is why Tuesday Fly Days are so important.  Plus, I’m all wrapped up underneath my clothes with a very large ace bandage; the better to stave off lymphedema which admittedly is getting to be less and less of an issue. Still, with Tuesdays, I wouldn’t have to worry about some adorable moppet crashing painfully into my side or some icky old horn dog elbowing me in my tender parts.  It would likely be the last thing he did this side of the grave and really, I hate the spectre of a public trial, don’t you? I’m not going to come off as sympathetic to some senior-citizen loving jury if I whack some old guy over the head with my laptop for putting his gnarled old hand on my thigh because that’s happened a few too many times already.  Not the whacking, the hand thing I mean. The chemo defense only lasts so many months after one recovers, I know, I know.

I also am truly convinced that a lot of the fuss that surrounds difficult travelers will simply evaporate.  The six-year-old wimpy kid that cried wolf when he got patted down prior to going to Disneyworld would not have cried wolf because all little kids would be getting a safe and modified kiddy version of a pat down. Just remember, frequent flyer folks, what they do to snow-suited babies in Germany; they wand them all down as the parents hold them up in the air, little booted feeties kicking away.  And while I doubt some German cherub named Hans or Inga is going to be packing anything more alarming than a damp diaper, you don’t hear any of their parents crying foul.  Point in fact, I’ve never felt so safe going through security as I do in Germany and we are talking five, yes, FIVE, security stops to every one in America.

Meanwhile, I totally suspect that kid’s equally whiny parents are looking for a hand out from the beleaguered airlines but hey, that’s just the lawyer in me.  I mean seriously, the kid had a video game and the parents were upset that the agents actually looked at it.  Really?  Clearly, these people don’t fly very often or they would have known that $199 piece of plastic and base metal that serves as cheap babysitter is going to be looked at, along with mom’s purse and dad’s girly magazines.  Six is old enough to understand and accept a minute or two of deprivation.  The parents were looking for a handout or did I mention that already?  And when he gets back home, a whole bunch of kids are going to be picking on him on the playground.  I won’t even speculate about his lunch money situation.  I hope his parents are listening.

There was recently also in the news a big to-do about a 95-year-old cancer patient would was mortified at having to remove her adult diaper prior to boarding a plane.  OK, first, why is somebody in her NINETIES and going through cancer treatments traveling?  It had better be to a better, more qualified medical facility is all I can say otherwise WHY is this poor woman traveling at all? The TSA could offer families and old folks a ‘pampie’ security line for those wearing diapers and deal with it that way, seriously.  This poor old woman need not have been so callously treated if only, yes, say it with me, we had Family And Old People Fly Day every Tuesday!  So, failing that, I’m putting on my expensive, noise canceling headset and hoping to drown out Gracie’s baby sister’s screams because apparently, Gracie’s little sister agrees with me, travel these days simply sucks.

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