FED UP

I soon realized that, despite the excitement of waking up in a fancy hotel halfway around the world every week, I wasn’t cut out to be a stewardess.

Each month you had to bid on a schedule of flights for the following month by listing the available ones in your order of preference. The senior girls got all the best schedules and the junior girls the most grueling ones, including a long, arduous flight over the pole to England, an overnight during which you couldn’t sleep because of jet lag, and a return flight the next day. The junior girls were also the first to be rerouted. I was—on a flight to Hong Kong—and had to fly a shuttle back and forth between Tokyo and Vietnam for days. True to form, I kept getting sick—colds and flus. And Operations wouldn’t let you fly with a cold because nasal congestion can cause your eardrums to burst at high altitudes. So they continually grounded me and docked my pay.

                                                                             …

“I’m so fed up I could cry—all the little things that could possibly go wrong are doing just that. I’ve been trying so hard to be organized, to counteract my tendency to be absent-minded—care, thoroughness, planning. But what good? My wig gets singed in an oven blast—how could I have known artificial hair was so sensitive to heat? My pocket notebook with myriad important dates and addresses, as well as a favorite drawing, disappears; apparently it fell out of my purse sometime yesterday during the bustle of my arrival in LA. My pantsuit is likely to be permanently stained, the lady at the dry cleaners tells me. And on and on. It all seems so senseless, like everything I touch goes awry.

“I keep feeling rushed, vaguely panic-stricken, as though there isn’t going to be time enough for me to complete each thing that I undertake, whether it’s an afternoon of shopping for sandals or an hour of guitar practice. I wasn’t cut out to be a stewardess, it seems—because I’m only allowed a day here or there in which to carry on a normal life. I keep thinking, I have three days…I have three days, as though my next flight to San Francisco were going to be the end of my life.”