Aero-Contortionism

copyright 2004 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

My boss sent me to one of our other offices near Knoxville TN. His boss’s secretary made the arrangements.

That’s was how I found out she hates me.

It’s possible that it was an honest mistake (or several honest mistakes). She is less then five foot tall herself, and could comfortably ride in the glove compartment of most import cars. It’s probably hard to remember the one you are making arrangements for is almost 6’6” and by no means skinny.

In retrospect, I am prepared to say that it was an oversight, but at the time I would have sworn she was trying to kill me.

I had to change planes in Dulles airport in Washington DC. The flight there, apart from the heightened security/post 9-11 full cavity check and DNA sampling, was rather uneventful. It was a fairly nice plane, and I was able to trade my middle seat(!) for one on the isle. It was a decent, normal flight. It was the only one of the trip.

At Dulles, I climbed into a rolling waiting room. If you’ve never been to Dulles, you need to go just to see these things. These are large rooms, complete with couches and little tables – on wheels. There is a door on either side of this contraption, and the idea is to move a group of passengers from one inaccessible door to another inaccessible door on the other side of the airport.

It looks like so many single-family homes having an informal dance.

The doors on the terminals to which these monstrosities hookup are not, by the way, on the same level. In addition to going back and forth, and left to right, these vehicles also go up and down to approach a level with the next door. This is never actually achieved.

Any amusement park would charge for a ride like this one. Anything that goes up and down while rolling around on uneven pavement, rattling it’s passengers like so many marbles in a tin can has to be a premium ride.

It took me three tries to get over that final step when we docked with the building on the other side of the airport, but I survived the ride, so bought a commemorative T-shirt to mark the occasion.

I headed for the next gate, for my connecting plane. I thought once I was boarded, I could rest a little, and sooth my aching – ahm – lower back. I walked down the airport, following the signs.

I stopped dead at the gate.

The door lead outside.

I am a child of the late 20th century. I know that it was once common practice to board a plane from the outside, but it also used to be common practice to shovel horse manure off of Main Street too.

This was a new experience for me, but I was rather charmed. I thought it was a very quaint little practice, bringing a bit of the old world into such a metropolitan area..

Then I saw the plane.

The first thing that struck me was that the plane had two PROPELLERS! I’d seen propellers in museums or on the small private planes that a few suicidal, dare-devil, extreme sports loving people flew around for fun, but the charm fled when I realized that I was placing my life on these inverted ceiling fans.

Then I noticed the plane itself.

I compared the overall size of the plane with my left shoe. The shoe was a little bigger, and not nearly as old. The stairs leading up to the plane doubled as it’s door. This had the bonus result of having a trampoline effect when you climbed up them.

I decided I would rather shovel horse manure off of Main Street.

I took the first step on the ramp and the stairs bounced me the rest of the way in. The inside of the plane was about six feet from the floor to the ceiling (remember the 6’6” passenger?). Not only could I not stand up, the aisle was so narrow, I had to walk down it sideways. Neck stretched out and down, shoulders hunched down around my ankles, I crab walked down to my assigned seat, only to find that the real horror had only begun.

This was on of those little puddle-jumping commuter flights where there are two seats on one side of the plane and a row of a single seat on the other side. I had the seat on the single side. Right up against the curve of the body of the plane.

In order to sit in this seat, I had to dislocate my left shoulder, tie my left arm across my chest, lay my head down on my right shoulder, and attempt to fit the overhead light into my left ear, then lay my nostril over the stewardess call button.

I got my legs into the proper position by raising my left leg just under my chin and twisting that foot up and behind my back. The right leg was simply crushed by the armrest of the seat. There wasn’t a single thing I could do about the right foot. Half of that foot was in the aisle and that was where it was going to stay. After I got myself twisted into the seat, I realized I had forgotten about my carryon luggage.

On this plane, at least on my side, there was no “under the seat in front of you” for baggage. The only place available was under your own seat, but even then, like me, the bag didn’t fit.

I set the laptop bag down on the floor, as close to under my seat as it would go and attempted to re-twist myself into position. Dislocate the shoulder, nose on the call button, light in the ear, knee under the chin, right leg … got stuck on the laptop.

The only way to get back into position was to put my right leg on top of the laptop. Standing on a laptop didn’t seam like a very wise choice, so I compromised by suspending my leg over the bag like the sword of Damocles ready to drop the judgment of death to my carryon.

Holding my breath and closing my eyes, I kept telling myself it was only a few hours to Knoxville. As I sat there, trying not to notice all the smaller people who trying not to notice me, the stewardess (I save the word flight attendant for those I respect) came to me, smiled sweetly and said, “Sir, please fasten your seat belt.”

First of all, let me say that there was nowhere that a seatbelt would prevent me from going that my current posture wouldn’t prevent first. Secondly, my left hand was currently beneath my right check (THAT cheek!) and my knees were attempting to trade sides, just for variety. I couldn’t even find a seat belt, let alone get a grasp on it.

I tried to explain this to the young lady, but the ventilator nozzle was blowing compressed air into my open mouth and it was coming out of my sinuses. I couldn’t even nod, because every time I tried, I ended up pressing the stewardess call button.

I was able to grasp the right side of the seat belt with my left hand and the left side of the belt with my right foot. Twisting in just the right way brought the two pieces in close proximity. It was the best I could do. She came by later and strapped down like so much cargo.

I lost track of where my right hand was, and lost feeling in my left. My hips had pretty much given up all hope of ever moving again, and my glasses where having an intimate encounter with the oxygen mask.

I was wishing I could have left my stomach on the ground.

Fortunately, this was a full-service airline. The takeoff from the runway left my stomach on the ground for me.

We where finally on our way, several business men, most of us tired and wanting no more than to arrive at our destination. All but me trying not to stare at this one person train wreck that had stuffed it’s self into the corner of the plane.

I saw one guy waving at me, looking embarrassed. I wondered why when I discovered the location of my right hand. It had somehow wrapped back around and was indeed waving at him.

Actually, it was flapping lifeless in the breeze from the vent standoff that was buried in my mouth and blowing the cabin air through my nose.

I tried to stop the motion, but I had lost motor control. I couldn’t explain the situation to him either, because my tonsils now had wind burn. Biting down on the vent nozzle, I was able redirect the flow of air. I’m not sure what that did to my arm, but the man I had been waving at suddenly became deeply offended.

If my hand was doing to him what he did to me, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize.

Having situated myself into such a position that I had lost most of my circulation, I was able to relax. That is to say that I eventually lost all feeling in my extremities.

In an effort to test whether or not that I was still alive, my body reacted with the one function it still had left.

A very full bladder warning.

I flowed out of the seat like an oil spill, filling the aisle and the lap of the man across from me before I could figure out how to put my feet on the floor. The problem wasn’t finding the floor, I no longer knew where my feet were.

Remember that the inside of the plane was six inches shorter than I was? My body didn’t care. There was such relief from the forced contortions, it was going to stretch, no matter what I thought about it!

After the second time I slammed my head on the ceiling, my brain got the idea that perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to stop stretching before the gathering darkness got any deeper.

I looked to the back of the plane for the bathroom. I didn’t see one. It wasn’t like the plane was big enough to conceal a toilet. The plane was barely bigger than a toilet!

“Miss” I croaked, now that the wind tunnel was out of my throat. “Where’s the bathroom?” I didn’t dare ask if there was a bathroom.

“Right behind that door” she said with a smile that could have been a result of a recent botox treatment.

“That door” was a door which was up against the interior wall of the plane. The only possible place “that door” could have gone was out on the wing and that vegga-matic propeller.

I decided to call her bluff. I walked back to the rear of the plane and discovered the cabin of this toy plane was actually getting smaller the further back it went. I now had to bend my knees, put my head on my chest and walk sideways to get to the rear of the plane. I looked like I was walking through a trash compactor.

“That door” was on my right hand side. On the left was the sort of galley that would have been too small for a van-conversion RV. The little galley had a thin wall to separated it from the passengers.

I couldn’t open “that door” without first smashing myself against the serving cart. The cart pressed up against the cabinetry, upsetting three miniature bottles of water and a bag of peanuts. I was able to rescue the bottles by throwing my face at them, but the peanuts were on their own. I opened the door expecting an out-house on the wings, but found to my surprise a toilet. Not a bathroom - just a toilet.

“That door” opened on fixture that was molded out from the wall. A miniature sink was located just above it and –ironically, the “please resume your seat” sign was at the top of this little alcove where it would be impossible to see if you happen to be sitting down.

After a second glance, I realized that no one would be sitting down on this protrusion of wall, flip up seat or no. I began to wonder if that was why there were all men on this flight.

“That door” was meant to open all the way and latch against the thin wall of the galley. Thus the galley was now a part of the bathroom. I resolved NEVER to eat peanuts on this flight. The ones that fell where officially no longer on a kitchen floor, they were now on a bathroom floor.

I don’t know why that made such a difference, but I couldn’t eat for the rest of the day.

Now in order to use this overhang, I had to get somewhere in the vicinity of it. To do this, in the shortest section of a miniature airplane, I had to brace my knees against the wall on either side of it. My right hand was needed for aiming (sorry ladies!) and my left hand was similarly engaged in holding the seat up, as it was spring loaded to return to it’s resting position. So much for a man’s flight!

Because of the curvature of the wall of the plane, I was required to press my face against the “return to your seats” sign, ending up with the impression of the word “your” being etched into my cheek in reverse.


I looked like one of those stuffed cats in the back window of a car, suction cupped to the glass, only this cat was doing something fairly obscene.

In a kitchen.

When I finished, I attempted to use the sink. I know I washed my hands because I could feel the water, but I couldn’t see to find the soap. I found a dinner napkin to wipe my hands and tried to open “that door”.

I had to slam into the cart again, this time the water bottles were just a loss. I still took off a part of my cheek getting the door past my face, but I got it secured against the hidden toilet.

Only to find our stewardess waiting for me so she could serve the in-flight refreshment.

I crab-walked back to my seat. I could feel my knees opening up again as the floor dropped slightly beneath me. Once to my seat, I could almost stand up again. Having learned from the last time, my body did not try to straighten, but passively waited to be retied.

Once back in my seat, twisted and pulled and strapped down, having adamantly refused both peanuts and water, I waited for the end of the trip.

The landing was smooth, but the taxiing was rather reminiscent of the one time I was a passenger in a friend’s low rider.

I was the last one off of the plane because it took the stewardess and the copilot an hour to untie my limbs.

I spent the rest of the day in a hotel room moaning like an cow with an anxiety disorder. By the morning, I was able to get to the office, but I walked sideways with my knees bent and my head down for a few days.

Several of my coworkers asked me about the word “your” stenciled backwards into my right cheek.

The trip back to Dulles was on a larger plane and, while not comfortable, wasn’t the journey through munchkin land the trip out had been. Although this stewardess did attempt to enforce the “keep the aisles clear” rule by slamming my knee with the serving cart. Several times.

From Dulles back to Phoenix, however, even though it was aboard a large plane with plenty of room, my boss’s boss’s secretary had booked me a middle seat in the last row of the plane.

The two gentlemen on either side of me were of the same general height and size. That is, they both came to about the level of my shoulders. I looked like a middle finger in the back of the plane.

Never make a secretary angry, and never fly in anything smaller than what you would normally wear.

Living down under

copyright 2004 Dale Hansen no reproduction without permission


When my brother became engaged, my father decided to build up the basement into a little apartment for the new couple.

It wasn’t so little after all, and with dark paneling and plush carpets it was another home below ours. It was beautiful. They moved in and lived there for a few years, until my brother went to graduate school in Chicago, leaving an unoccupied, but fully furnished basement. The basement was then regulated to double duty, both as a guest house and a repository for dilapidated furniture.

It became a sort of family museum to walk around in the basement. The couch Dad had set on fire was next to the chair the old cat had shredded. They were both behind the coffee table that someone had gouged with a belt buckle when he played on it, even after I had been told not to.

At the age of 12, I was convinced that I had become an adult. I couldn’t remember the exact time and circumstances of my remarkable transformation, but I remember thinking “ So this is what it’s like to be a grown up.” Filled with my own conviction of maturity, I decided I needed to get out and live on my own.

I was angry and appalled to find no one would rent an apartment to me – just because of my age! This was anti-youth prejudice in the worst way! Being without any income was awfully inconvenient as well. This was just another injustice for the very young!

As a response to overwhelming age-ism, I decided the basement was now my own apartment. Here was the perfect starter apartment. And I didn’t even have to pay rent.

The hard part was going to be convincing my parents.

I approached my mother with all the delicacy and tact of that any bomb disposal unit would use when approaching an unknown package. I realized that she could blow at any moment, but hoped she wouldn’t.

She gave me the shock of my life. She said, “Okay.” That was all! No argument, no questions, no delays. I was moving into a greater world of independence and self-sufficiency! I was going to have freedom and autonomy! And my mommy said I could.

After 12 years, I still hadn’t learned how devious and crafty mothers can be. This would be the lesson that would forever flavor my perception of motherhood.

---

The big move

All that day, I moved items from my room into the basement. I had inherited a kitchen, a living room with a fireplace and a master bedroom (master!) in which to organize all the garbage I had collected over my long lifetime.

I was thankful for all the burned, scratched and broken furniture exiled to the recesses of the basement, or I would have had a little pitiful pile of a very few items in the corner of a very big emptiness.

Each armload I carried required a strong resolve to push down my natural reaction to being in “THE BASEMENT". After all, I was a grownup now.

Besides, this was my room, my space, my sanctum sanctorum. This was now where I would go to escape from the world, the one place where I could be safe and nurtured. It was MY ROOM, with all the fierce pride and solidity that means to a 12 year old.

It most assuredly was not, NOT a dank, creepy, scary, bug infested, strange noises, musty, terror-filled hell hole.

Of course not.

Armload after armload made it’s way downstairs as I told myself that over and over it again. It became my mantra, my battle cry. I almost sang it: “ Not a dank, creepy, scary, bug infested, strange noises, musty, terror-filled hell hole. – of course not!”

Later that day, I decided to join my family for the evening meal. It was more social, after all, and not too far to travel. After dinner, it was time to repair into my – ahem – apartment.

Because this was my first evening, I decided that I should share this experience with my best friend..

My dog.

After much calling, coaxing, cajoling, ordering and meat flavored bribes, I resorted to picking up the little beast and carrying him downstairs. He was going to share this moment with me if it killed him! After all, what are friends for?

There is a special relationship between a boy and his dog. A dog instinctively knows when his owner is upset or worried or scared. Not that I was, of course, but if it should happen, he would have known. I knew this for a fact because every dog on TV always knew how his boy was feeling. This was an unbreakable bond.

As soon as his paws hit the carpet, he flew up the stairs and into the kitchen.

I tried again, but this time I closed the door behind me. I thought he and I could watch TV. He thought that if he sat at the door at the top of the steps and howled, someone would let him out.

Obviously something in the basement frightened him, I mean what else could it be? Dogs are more sensitive to ghosts and monsters, aren’t they? They can see things no human can see, right? There must be a reason he didn’t want to stay. What unspeakable horrors from the basement did he detect?

I let him out and called him a traitor. I returned to the basement and resolutely basked in the cold glow of the 12 inch black and white TV that was slightly older than I was. I stubbornly stared into the TV and refused to think about what mutating horrors may have driven the dog away. The big sissy.

I spent the rest of the evening chasing shadows with quick movements of my eyes. By the end of the night I had made myself more than a little dizzy.

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The long night

Finally, the truth that I could no longer deny, the decision I could no longer put off:. It was… …it was time to go to bed.

Going to bed meant turning of the TV.

Going to bed meant going into the bedroom of my little apartment.

The bedroom that had a single door and no other way out.

The bedroom that was all the way from the stairs across the basement.

It was a death trap.

If the monsters came, they would come through the door. I knew this because they always did in the movies.

I’d have to run through them to get out alive. Not just through the door, but through the multitude of monsters crowding the rest of the basement waiting their turn to get in the room.

I left the basement door open. I’d seen that movie! I also though I’d leave a few lights on. This meant turning on every light I could find and bringing down every lamp I could get from upstairs.

I got into bed and closed the bedroom door. The silence engulfed me. Except that it was too bright, I almost began to sleep, lulled by the false sense of security so vital to any fatal trap.

B-B-B-BANG!

It sounded like it was from the little basement kitchen.

Didn’t the old fridge make that noise during the day?

Maybe that was it. Sure that had to be it!. That or a large group of snarling, rabid wolves who had come out of the woods because they were half crazed with hunger and searching for a young, tender, 12 year old morsel like me.

No, it was the fridge, I could hear it running. It had a soft purring noise. I began to relax again.

I had forgotten that the water heater was located just behind the head of the bed, on the other side of some thin paneling. I was straining as hard as I could, listening so intently to the fridge, that when the water heater turned on it sounded like the trumpets of Revelations announcing the end of the mortal world.

I had only just gotten my heart back into the habit of beating, when the worst noise of all threatened to stop it again. Foot falls. There was something there, I knew there was. I heard it come to the bedroom door and stop.

I wanted to say something like “Mother? Is that you? Is everything OK?” the closest I could get my mind to wrap around was “Mom?’ The word came out sounding more like “Erk?”.

No, whatever it was, it wasn’t human , I could hear it sniffing at my door, it’s breath seemed to pull my life force through the door jamb.

It was my dog! It had to be! I left the basement door open and he had come down to be with me! My faithful and loyal friend, my comfort and my joy. If he spent the night with me, I knew that everything would be fine.

But what if it wasn’t him? There was still that pack of wolves to consider.

It was several long lifetimes before I heard “it” leave again. I felt guilty for shutting the dog out of my room (if it was him), but guilt wasn’t exactly the strongest feeling I was having at the moment.

When I thought the danger had passed, I grabbed my blanket and ran up the stairs, bed clothes following behind me, flying like an ejected parachute and doing just about as much to help my headlong flight as the braking parachutes of a drag racer.

I kept thinking that the blankets would be the first thing that a monster would grab when trying to “get” me. But maybe that would buy me some time.

I slammed the basement door shut and ran to my old room. I spent the rest of the night on the old mattress, my pillows and sheets were still in the basement left to fend for themselves.

The next day I moved my stuff back. Moving back was quicker than moving down because all that next day, I heard the monsters laughing at me.

Years later I found out that when my older sister had complained about my getting the basement to myself, mother told her, “He won’t last the night!”.

I would like to be offended, but she was right.

I think that may be the most offensive part.

Special Announcement You may notice that all the entries past here are 3 years old or more. This is because my sense of humor was outsourced to India. It has recently returned on a work visa and has applied for naturalization papers. Once the immigration process is complete, it will be outsourced once again, leaving yet another American out of work. Among educated people, this is called “Good for the American economy”.