Long Island: the Texas of the East Coast, Part I

My last roommate was notoriously cheap.  Or rather, in polite terms, extremely good at budgeting himself. When I was last unemployed I looked to him for lessons in frugality: buy a flask, shower at the gym, make beans and rice a staple dish. For an agonizing month I followed in his footsteps while living off my savings.  But soon I found a job and quickly adjusted my lifestyle to my income.  And now, three years later, I am once again plugging in the rice cooker.  And so, when the opportunity arose to visit New York last weekend to see a performance of piece I wrote, I began the FUN FILLED task of carefully comparing airline prices. Obviously I was going to go, but after three months of travel, I am completely broke. So: Southwest. The Walmart of Airlines. The catch: they no longer fly into La Guardia, just Long Island.  Ah Islip.  I’d never done this before, but my friend Jordana assured me it was a piece of cake.

Cut to:

Me, clutching my armrests, audibly breathing, and reconsidering my atheism.  Our 737 had hit a storm and we were going down.  And then back up. And down.  We bounced through air pockets, rattled through rain clouds; a woman three rows ahead of me yacked into her barf bag.  Luckily, I wasn’t flying alone.  My friend Kim, who also wrote a piece for the NY show, sat next to me, seemingly calm among a sea of gasping passengers.  “Talk to me Kim, talk to me,” I begged, “tell me a stupid joke.”  “A joke?” she asked. “Now?”

Okay, here’s the thing: earlier this spring I was flying home from Vegas when my plane encountered a milder, though still frightening, bout of turbulence.  In an attempt to relieve the collective tension permeating the cabin, the flight attendant got on the loud speaker, and in a questionable Scottish accent announced “she can’t take it any longer, she’s going down Captain!”  I let out a half laugh, a hiccup of air and sound.  This comment was not totally comforting, but I appreciated that he found humor in our impending doom. Just two weeks ago, I was flying back to Chicago from Seattle, when again, we hit a patch of turbulence.  This time, two of the flight attendants got over the speaker and began a vaudevillian-like call and response, that ended in this joke:

Once there was a family of potatoes.  A mom potato, a dad potato and a 18-year-old girl potato.  One day, the girl potato, who was a freshman in college, came home to her parents house for a visit.  “Mom, Mom,” she said, “I have something to tell you! I’m in love!  I saw the man I’m going to marry!”  “Who is it?” the mom potato asked.  “It’s Bill Walsh,” the daughter potato answered.  “You better go tell your father,” the mom potato said.  “Dad, Dad,” the girl potato said, “I’m in love!  I saw the man I’m going to marry! It’s Bill Walsh.”  “What?” the father potato cried, “no daughter of mine is marrying Bill Walsh.” “But Dad, why not?” the girl potato asked. “Because he’s nothing but a commentator.”

Get it?

This joke is so stupid, but it totally did the trick.  Suddenly, we were no longer imagining our own fiery deaths, but groaning out loud together, united in the embarrassed pleasure of a bad joke.

Both of these were Southwest flights.  Clearly, the turbulence comedy hour is part of their schtick.  You know the Southwest shtick, right?  They say “clever” things during the safety speech like “secure your safety mask before securing your child’s, if you have two children, pick your favorite!” And when you land: “Thank you for flying Southwest. We know you have many options when you fly, we’re glad you can’t afford them.” Stupid, cheap, but sometimes, USEFUL.

And now, as we lurched and lunged through the storm: silence. Which of course meant that we were in actual danger.  The flight attendants were strapped down into their safety seats, unable to reach the loud speaker.

“Any joke, I don’t care, but preferably a stupid one.” I said to Kim. There’s something about imminent death that makes the racist/sexist/pedophile/dead baby joke less appealing. Just in case God exists, you need to know that your last moments in life were redeemable.

“Okay, okay, I got one” she said. “ A mushroom walks into a bar.  He goes up to a pretty girl and says ‘would you like to dance?’ ‘NO!’ the girl laughs. ‘why not?’ asks the mushroom.’ ‘Because your a MUSHROOM,’ she says.  ‘Yeah,’ he answers, ‘but I’m a really FUN GUY.’

The woman on my left pulled her coat tighter over her head.  I let out a nervous laugh. “Good, good,” I said, “keep going.”  Kim laffy-taffy-ied my way through that turbulence. And for that, I am forever grateful. Especially because it went on for our entire thirty minute dissent.  I kid you not.  It was hands down the most terrifying flight I’d ever been on.  When we touched down the cabin burst into applause, the universal sign of a very bad flight.  Little did I know that our trip was just beginning…

See Power Love for Kim’s take on our adventures.