iPhone Saves the Day

I travel pretty regularly for my job. Last week I was having a particularly bad day at the airport and ended up in a really foul mood. This tends to happen every time I fly because as much as I love travel, I hate flying. It’s not so much that I hate to fly or have a fear of flying. I used to jump out of helicopters for crying out loud. I hate the mass of people from all over the country coughing and sneezing, and bringing their sickness with them. I hate the Orwellian approach to “security” at the airport. The same message has been playing nonstop in every airport in America for close to 10 years. “Due to increased security concerns, loading and unloading is authorized…” Like a frog boiling slowly, we have all become accustomed to a bad situation. I hate being treated like a kindergartener. Couple all of this with being newly married and having to leave my beautiful new wife at home, and you end up with a recipe for disaster.  So, with all this in my head, I hopped on my next flight, sat down in my business class seat, and settled into the normal routine of waiting for the other passengers to board, playing with my seatbelt, pretending to read the card in the seatback in front of me, and so on.

A younger kid, maybe 22 or 23 came and sat down next to me, and I informed him that I would gladly move to another seat so we could both have more room if there were two seats next to each other that remained open after everyone was onboard. I did this as he was putting his carry-on in the overhead bin. So, to add to an already bad day, what response do I get? Nothing. Silence. Not even a look of recognition. As you can imagine, my mood turned even more sour.

Now, I have been told by a few people close to me that I give off the persona of being Billy Badass. I don’t see it, but I have spent most of my adult life in a grunt style military structure, where being easy to deal with is sometimes seen as a sign of weakness.  I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they burn me, but once you burn me, Lord have mercy!

Even though I was mad, something told me that this guy needed a second chance. He was staring out the window at this point in time, watching the baggage throwers load our luggage onto the plane. I repeated my previous statement, trying to stay as pleasant as the situation would allow. Again, absolutely nothing. Not a response, not a turn around and stare, nothing. What the hell had I ever done to this guy?

I decided to leave it alone since making a scene on an airplane is a surefire way to delay your travel plans for a day and get the old body cavity search from one of the power tripping high school dropouts in TSA. The stewardess came by to take drink orders and I asked for a glass of water. The guy next to me turned from the window suddenly, looked at the flight attendant, and pointed to his mouth and ears in a fast manner indicating that he was deaf.

Guess who the asshole is now!

My time in the Marines put me in many different cultures all around the world, and one of the skills I picked up was a rudimentary understanding of how to communicate with my hands due to language barriers. Sitting next to me was a guy who spoke fluently with his hands because it was his first and only language. My anger suddenly disappeared.

I felt really bad about being upset with this guy. I had inadvertently transferred my anger from my whole crumby day onto him and I really wanted to make amends, even though he had no idea what was going on. I racked my brain trying to come up with a way to communicate. I was traveling light and didn’t have a pen or paper in my carry-on, so I pulled out my iPhone and opened a new note. Typing out a quick introduction, I handed the iPhone to him. He smiled, turned, shook my hand and hammered out an extremely fast response. His name was Ben and he had just come back from New Zealand on a summer college program in deaf studies. He went to help teach sign language to children and people who had recently lost their hearing. We passed the phone back and forth for a few minutes, and I told him that I would let him get some rest since he had just come off of an international flight. So, he put a travel mask over his eyes, covered up with a blanket, and started napping.

Another 20 minutes went by and I started to get the understanding that something was wrong. Finally the pilot came over the intercom and announced that there was a fuel spill somewhere behind us and that a crew was trying to clean it up so we could leave. Another 20 minutes. As it turns out, we had been lied to. It was our engine that was leaking fuel all over the runway and in addition to the cleanup crew; mechanics were "working tirelessly", trying to fix our engine so that we could leave.

Another 30 minutes. I started to notice the flight attendants placing out of order signs on all of the lavatory doors. Ben was sawing logs at this point, so I typed a message on my iPhone and woke him up so that he would know what was going on. Another 30 minutes. The flight attendant finally made an announcement that people with connecting flights after this one would be able to deplane, and make other arrangements to get to their final destination. I listened and typed so that Ben was in the loop and he ended up getting off the plane so he could make it home.

Fast forward about two and a half hours. The rest of us were finally let off the flight and told that another plane was waiting in a different terminal. We all walked across the airport and found that the plane we were promised “had not arrived yet.” To make a long story short, I spent close to 14 hours in three airports to make a very short trip. It was, by far, one of the worst travel days I have experienced in a long time. But unlike most of my other airport experiences, I remained calm and humble.

As pissed off and angry as people get sometimes, most don’t stop to realize the important things in life.  I was proof of that!  Ben had been living with a disability his entire life. His entire world experience was totally different than mine. After sight, hearing is our next most important sense. He made due with his circumstances, and I am sure got along just fine with a little help, from time to time, from people willing to lend a hand. I am glad I could be the better man that day. Had I got up and moved to another seat in anger, or even went to the restroom at the wrong time, Ben may have been stuck in that airport with me all day.

I think it’s time to say goodbye to Billy Badass. I may very well carry a chip on my shoulder and not even notice it is there. In the survival community, much lip service is paid to bartering skills and the like. This entire experience made me realize that our dealings with other people might be our most important survival strategy. If you are the angry old coot living out on the edge of town sitting on top of a basement of canned beans, content in your own misery, it may well be the death of you in the end. Values, compassion, family, and community are the only things that will hold society together when SHTF. Without them, we will devolve into a feudal society where the strong overpower the weak and take what they have. I had a bit of a wakeup call with this experience. Where do you stand?

See you at Galt's Gulch!