Forget About the Snakes, Worry About the Dead Bodies

Imagine this. You’re on a plane. You’ve paid for a first class ticket. (All right work with me here, we’re pretending). There’s no one sitting beside you. The stewardess has massaged your feet, filled your champagne flute, read you a bedtime story, kissed your forehead, tucked a blanket around you and turned off the light. (I’m assuming here since I’ve never actually been in first class).

When you wake up, you look over and realize that you’re next to A DEAD BODY!



Not only is this person dead, but it’s still flopping around. This body can’t stay in its seat and keeps sliding down to the floor.

This really happened. Okay it happened awhile ago, but it happened.

Turns out a woman died in second class or third class or whatever class it is that requires you to travel with your knees up at your ears while you juggle peanuts, a diet coke and a plastic meal in your lap and the passenger beside you is almost sitting on you because they’ve squeezed three people into space for two seats.

Turns out its standard procedure to remove dead bodies and place them in first class. “Hey we got another one! Is there room up there? Maybe we can stick him beside Madonna!”

You know, maybe if they had seated her in first class in the first place she would have still been alive. But no, she had to wait until she was dead.

Anyone else see the irony here?

Because the body was flopping around they had to prop her up with pillows, stick sunglasses on her face and a diet coke in her hand so no one would know that she was actually dead.

I guess it’s only fair that the people who are getting the best service should have to suck it up and sit beside the dead bodies.

Who’s idea was it to stick hundreds of people on an enclosed metal container, pack them in like sardines, and take the container up in the air thousands of feet?

Is it any wonder that more people haven’t died?

Actually as it turns out, this is a fairly common occurrence. I had heard about this story so when I surfed the net searching it out, I discovered it is not unusual for people to die on planes that don’t involve crashes.

Of course the airlines never tell you about this. There’s no warning that you could die from acute claustrophobia or that you might have to offer your shoulder to a dead person’s head. In the times that I have flown I don't recall signing a release about this.

Personally I hate flying. I don’t mind the actual flying part. In fact one summer I went up in a six passenger plane and thoroughly enjoyed it – well except for the fact that my stomach felt a bit queasy. I like heights. I’ve been parasailing. If I were a super hero I would be happy with two powers, flying and the ability to go back in time. No wait, three. I want to be able to shape shift. Then I can look like a hundred and ten pound super-model.

No, what I hate is the packed like sardines thing. There’s something disconcerting about being forced to cuddle up with complete strangers and having to be careful that you don’t accidentally knee yourself in the nose or knee someone else in an unmentionable place.

I’ve always figured that one day I’ll be rich and famous and be able to travel first class, but now I have to worry if I fall asleep will I wake up surrounded by dead bodies holding diet cokes.

I see a Stephen King movie in all this.

*****

I tried to find some clip art to illustrate this but for some reason there's no "dead people on planes", "zombies on planes", or "skeletons on planes" clip art. Go figure.