This is Flight 616 Declaring An Emergency, Over!

Chicago to KC is an hour flight. Flying is an interminable hell, as we all know. But anyone can last an hour, especially on the last leg of a return trip home. Right?

I was in the last row on a completely full flight. Didn't check in soon enough, so it's the window for me. A lovely family of non-English speakers piled in loudly next to me, junior in the middle, mom on the aisle. Relatives of every size and shape fill the row beside mine, the one in front, and the row in front of that one. Junior, probably nine at the most, falls asleep before we are wheels up.

Full flight, back of the bus, in the middle of what appeared to be a mass exodus from Islamabad. Good times.

The landing gear had barely retracted with a thump before the turbulence began. We herked, jerked, bounced, slid, bumped, and jumped the entire flight. The flight attendants never made it out of their seats. No breaks from it. We were all over the sky the full hour. Miserable.

Junior, still asleep, how I have no idea, got uncomfortable and decided to kick off his shoes. Oh dear Mother of Mildred, the smell. By then the entire clan was asleep. I looked around for anyone still awake who may have noticed the interior paint peeling off the fuselage from the stink, but to no avail. I was left alone to wallow in it. When this kid returns to his homeland, he will immediately have the register his feet as deadly weapons. He will be feared with dread loathing in middle school P.E. when he takes off his tennis shoes in the locker room. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Couldn't get up and move, everyone was pinned to their seats by the bucking and heaving going on. I reached up and switched on all the air vents, but mom noticed that in about thirty seconds waking up just long enough to turn them off. Honestly, the thought of clawing my way through to the tail section for a seat on the rudder was looking like my only way out. I resorted to holding the in-flight magazine up to my face just to smell the ink.

Tired from travelling, unnerved by the turbulence, and sickened from the nostril melting assault on my poor, defenseless nose, it quickly turned from bad to worse. Junior, again uncomfortable, shifted so he could put his head in his mother's lap. Gentle readers, after he did that, he extended his legs and put his weapons of mass destruction right on me, on my lap. Game over. I, for the first time in my life, was about to create in international incident. Something from deep within me welled up. Honestly, it could have been dinner broken loose by the mile high rodeo currently taking place, but I'd like to think it was my survival instincts kicking in. The thought of stowing the kid, wheels up, handle in the back, in the overhead bin crossed my mind. After what I had endured so far, I'd be that guy. You know, the last one on the plane with a carry-on he should have checked. He jams, crams, and slams the lid twelve times latching it closed right before shattering the door cursing like a sailor the whole time. I so wanted to be that guy. Junior had it coming.

I knew in my heart that we would need to make an emergency landing somewhere in Iowa because a flight attendant would be soon be compelled to taze me. Frankly, 50,000 volts of low amp electricity would have been welcomed, so long as the aim was true and the barbed darts dug deep into my nose. Disgusting. So gross. I may have peed a little, actually.

That was it. I peeled the magazine off my face, not before taking a huge breath and holding it, of course. I turned to his mother and said loud enough to be heard over the teeth rattling jar of a thousand tons of steel shaking apart in the sky, "Excuse me Ma'am, would you mind....."

The look in the one good eye that hadn't retracted into my skull trying to survive the bio-chemical attack must have been enough. Junior not only woke up, he quickly got moved to the row beside mine, swallowed up by a protective clan. There were many apologies and smiling nods from the gaggle of relatives all around. It took two minutes before Junior's seat mates began to grow faint, wilting from the absolutely atrocious maelstrom that was this kid's feet, when I heard a flurry of Arabic. Moments later, Junior finally, mercifully, and under duress, was made to put on shoes. More aptly, he poured his putrid, rotting stumps back into a canvas containment vessel that I prayed was sufficient to the task lest we all perish.

An hour is not a long time. However, try it holding your breath, knowing that if the smell didn't kill you, ripping apart in the sky just might.

Politeness long sense lost, the vacuum created by my running up the narrow center aisle in the plane to make my escape the moment of touchdown was sufficient enough to bring all seat backs and tray tables to the full upright positions, paper waste, left over service items, and loose fitting articles of clothing all fluttering chaotic in my wake. Didn't care. The second the cabin door opened, the red jacketed gate attendant got quite a shock as I wrapped my arms around him in bear hug, lifting him off the floor, as I sobbed thanking him for my deliverance. Stopping just long enough to poke my head into the cockpit to thank them for demonstrating the engineering limits for wing deflection and pitch-to-yaw ratios, and to commend them for hitting every thunderhead in the wide open expanse of sky between here and Chicago, I tore out at a full sprint up the jet-way rubbing my nose along the wall the entire distance.

Disoriented from the sixty minute roller coaster ride, and with my vision blurred from tears of joy, I stumbled to the baggage carousel. Clearly not well, I mistook an overly tanned retiree's Lhasa-Apso for a shaggy towel, snatching it off it's diamond crusted leash and profoundly violating it, as I attempted to scrub the the residual stench from my nose and face. After retrieving my bag, I found my car and drove home with my head out the window.

Two things:
-I may never fly again, and I mean it, and the stupid Lhasa Apso followed me home...