Flying by the Seat of My Pants: Flight Attendant Adventures on a Wing and a Prayer by Marsha Marks Read Free Book Online

week of vacation each month, bunching their trips together and getting paid for not working.”
    “I’m warning you,” she said. “If you go into the lounge when they are signing in, you’ll just get jealous.”
    But all of us held on to the dream that someday, maybe someday, we’d have schedules like Spuds. We all dreamed of becoming a Spud.
    In 2004, the year in which I’m writing this book, there have been major cutbacks on all the airlines. No longer are there salaries like the Spuds once made, and none of our flight attendants get six weeks vacation anymore. The good old days are gone, and with them went our dreams of ever becoming a Spud.

C HAPTER 19
     

     

Saving Lives
     
    Y ou know what I like about this job?” asked Peaches as she sat next to me on the jump seat. “You do not have to use that side of your brain that is best left for scientists and such.”
    “You mean the left side of your brain?” I said, looking over my glasses at her.
    “Yes, I prefer to lean to the right. Left thinking is for people who do not have looks.” She paused and looked right at me, as if to make her point, then continued. “For me, it’s just not right. I prefer using the part of my brain that takes care of personality and not particulars.”
    Then Peaches leaned in as if to share a secret. “And,” she said, “when I try to use that left part of my brain, I sometimes get mixed up. Did you hear what happened to me in training?”
    “No.”
    “Can you keep a secret?”
    “No.”
    “Well, I mean, will it go no further than your closest friends?” She obviously wanted to tell me.
    “No further unless I write a book one day.”
    “Honey, you are never gonna write a book. Come on, you are a flight attendant. We are not known for typing.”
    “I’m taking notes,” I said, “but I won’t use your real name.”
    “Or the name of my future husband, Mr. Frank Barnell Jeffreys III. Now, that would be humiliating. How long have you known how to type?” she asked.
    “Peaches, just tell me the story.”
    “Okay, I was really trying to concentrate in training. But this one day, I had this tiny chip in my nail and it was snagging things, so I had to take care of it during class. I was filing it while the teacher was going on and on about how to save a life or something. She was shouting like some Southern Pentecostal.”
    “It was the health and safety drills?” I asked.
    “Yes.” Peaches nodded her head. “And—”
    I interrupted her. “The teacher was shouting symptoms of a passenger who needed assistance?”
    “Yes, and you know I don’t like shouting, and she kept yelling, ‘You’ve got a middle-aged man lying in the aisle, unconscious but breathing. What are you gonna do?’” Well, I was just going to let someone else answer that question. But no one did answer it. Then the teacher yelled again, ‘You’ve got a middle-aged man lying in the aisle
unconscious but breathing!
What are you
gonna do?’”
    “Peaches,” I said, “she was shouting because we are supposed to be able to shout back our response. Remember our motto: Maintain life until help arrives?”
    “Yeah, well, I was waiting for someone else to answer. But the teacher sees me furiously filing my little nail, behind my book, and points right at me and yells at me. I mean, she yelled each word as if it were a sentence in itself: ‘You! You-have-got-a-middle-aged-man-lying-in-the-aisle-unconscious-but-breathing! What-are-you-going-to-do?’”
    Peaches looked up and patted her hair. “I got flustered. I mean, I had studied what to do for an unconscious man, but I didn’t understand this new problem, so I asked her.”
    “You asked her?”
    “I raised my hand and said, ‘I just have one question.’ The teacher said,
‘What?’
And I said, ‘What is butt-breathing?’ I mean, I had heard of ‘unconscious’ but not ‘unconscious butt-breathing.’”
    “I’ve never heard of it either,” I said.
    “I know,” Peaches