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Ordinary Adventures Blog

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An Unfortunate Incident


simplybill

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I've spent much of my life traveling. I drove trucks for about ten years when I lived in Utah. I was blessed to spend my days driving through the mountains and flatlands of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. One of my favorite memories is the time I parked in a turnoff at the top of Sardine Summit at one o'clock in the morning. I shut down the engine, rolled down the windows and ate my brown-bag lunch while listening to the wind in the trees and gazing at millions of stars in the sky.

I went from truckdriving to "flight-attending". 27 years as a flight attendant and I still love my job. I often ask myself, "What did I do to deserve this?" Yes, there are trying moments: Weather delays, the occasional lavatory smoker, severe turbulence. Passengers sometimes ask, "Don't you ever get scared?" The usual response is something like, "Well, you know, flying is the safest way to travel!" spoken in a cheery voice.

But there are things that scare us. Decompression, for example. Now, a Slow Decompression is pretty uneventful. You feel a bit light-headed and then "four oxygen masks drop from the compartment above you." Very standard stuff.

A "Massive Decompression" is another matter entirely. If a plane flying at altitude suffers a catastrophic event, the fuselage may completely disintegrate. As one of my Initial Trainers said to our class, "No one survives a massive decompression."

And yet, there's another event that we flight attendants fear even more: the massive decompression of a Coke can on a hot summer day. Just recently, I was working in the aft galley when such an event occurred. In the warmer months I often ice down some soft drinks in an empty beer kit. One hot, muggy morning I bent down to put a can of Coke in a kit, and the can slipped from my hand. It fell about a foot to the floor. A mere 12 inches.

Immediately, time slowed to a crawl even as my mind began to race.

At eight inches from the floor, I thought: "I hope it doesn't blow."

At six inches: "This could be bad."

At four inches: "Lord have mercy."

And then the sound and the fury reached me....A huge, brownish cloud filled my field of vision, a noise as though from a cannon stung my eardrums, and my mind said, "Wow, this looks just like a nuclear explosion."

The impact was catastrophic. In one millisecond, the sugary syrup penetrated my freshly-ironed uniform shirt and it drenched my hair, my face, my chest and my arms. I ran to look in the lavatory mirror and recoiled at the sight of my brown-freckled face and spiky brown hair. I was hideous.

The boarding process had just begun. I called the "A" position flight attendant to report my unhappy incident. And then, inexplicably, an elderly couple that had pre-boarded walked all the way to the back of the plane to sit in the very last row. The sweet little old lady said to me, "I heard you had a little accident back here." I managed to suppress the first response that popped into my head and I merely said to her in a cheery voice, "Oh, it made quite a mess!"

Well, I cleaned up my face and the galley walls and the ceiling and all 74 of those stupid red latches and I retrieved a clean shirt from my roller bag. I somehow got through the safety demo looking only a little bit wrinkled and spiky.

So next time you're on an airplane, please be kind to your flight attendants. You never know what frightening events they may have suffered beforehand.

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StarMountainKid

Posted

Try opening a 2 liter of frozen solid Coke. Another catastrophic nuclear detonation. lol And you don't need to be in an airplane to be the victim!

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markdohle

Posted

Wow.....that was a you-Tube moment for sure. When I was young my older brother would send me to get him a coke. I would get the bottle and shake it up real hard. When I got to hm he would look at me and say did you shake it.....I looked at him all innocent like and said no....then he would get the bottle opener and open it and POW!!!!! It would fly. We would then fight and have all kinds of fun. Mom mom for some reason did not like it.....we always cleaned up afterwards.

Peace

mark

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