THE UNFRIENDLY SKIES

Travel writers can prattle on endlessly saying things like, "Travel can profoundly change a person."

From what I gather, these writers believe that traveling expands a person's horizons by putting him/her in contact with other people and cultures. And when your horizons are expanded, you are a very nice person. Extremely nice.

How nice? Well, an uncouth un-traveled person might look down on certain activities like public urination or driving on the sidewalk. But a world traveler knows that these activities are perfectly acceptable in other, exotic lands. That traveler may even bring some of these customs back to his home after a particularly satisfying trip.

But I'm not so sure travel really does all those magical things. I've been doing a lot of travel lately and it's turning me into a complete prick.

I've been described as a bleeding heart by many. I'm all into saving the whales and feeding the children, and feeding the whales to the saved children.... all that kind of stuff. I'm the kind of guy who can't pass a homeless guy without showering him with money and morsels of gourmet food.

All of this changes the moment I step foot on a plane. From then on, the people around me are no longer my fellow travelers on the journey of life. They are no longer brothers and sisters in the human race. They're not even creatures deserving common courtesy.

Nope, every man, woman, and child on that plane is a foe... a rival for scarce resources. If they are not stopped, they will take all the overhead bin space and eat all the peanuts. They will viciously take the armrest that is rightfully yours. They must be destroyed.

And then there's the idea that contact with foreign cultures will magically make a person more loving and tolerant of others. Don’t believe it.

Have you flown Korean Air? I have. It brought me into close contact with a non-American culture. To put it mildly, it was not a positive experience.

The flight started with a Korean woman sitting in front of me putting her carry on luggage under her seat... where my feet were supposed to go! With a large, insincere smile that only an American can truly pull off, I removed her luggage from my space and handed it back to her. Using helpful hand gestures, I show her how she could, if she wanted to, place the luggage in her OWN foot room, not mine. She glared at me and called a flight attendant. The flight attendant glared at me, then took the bag away to what I can only assume is some sort of Koreans-only luggage storage area.

For the rest of the flight, the woman tossed all of her trash over her chair and into my lap. By the end of the 14 hour flight, I was swimming in a sea of discarded candy wrappers, plastic cups, and used Kleenex

The flight attendant made sure I was having a rotten time, too. While I was sleeping, she would hit the button on my chair to place it in the “full upright and locked position.” When I gave her an expression that is the international sign for, “why the hell did you just do that,” she said, “The woman behind you wants to use her tray table.” Then she beat another American passenger with a tire iron.

I may have made that last part up, but I think my point is clear. Before this experience, my narrow-minded, un-traveled self believed that people of different cultures could become friends if only they could spend some time together and understand each other. I spent 14 hours together on a plane with another culture. We’re not friends now.

The whole “put ‘em in a room and they’ll be friends” theory is the whole idea behind the United Nations, and we can all see how well that went. As a matter of fact, I was once on a British Airways flight from LA to London that was very much like the United Nations. There were people from every nation on earth, the Americans and Brits had more power than the others, and everyone hated each other when it was done.

A French kid kept kicking the back of my chair as I tried to sleep. A Lebanese family of five was completely out of control for the duration of the flight. At one point, the father gave his 2 year old a metal box full of wood pieces to play with. When a German man who was trying to sleep shouted an objection across the plan, the Lebanese man shouted back, “This is an airplane, not a hotel!” They nearly came to blows.

I would have joined in the scrum, but I was so tired, all I could do is glare and drool in a threatening manner.

Needless to say, international relations were substantially set back by that flight. Everyone on that plane entered Heathrow committed to despising and shunning people from other nations.

Except Norwegians. I think we all agreed that Norwegians were ok.