Flightpath

At times in my life I've felt like that Up in the Air guy George Clooney plays, when he’s flying around the country firing people.

(Well, anyway he’s doing that until the foxy chick played by Vere Farmiga­­­ breaks his heart. We’re not sure what changes his character will undergo when the screen fades to black.)

I travelled for 25 years for my job, by car mostly, but also up in the air.

By now I can whip that laptop out of its bag as fast as the best of them.

Quick as a wink I can take off a coat, un-holster a phone, give a special curveball of a kick to my shoes so they shoot right up into my hands, first the right, then the left, and in one sweet motion land in one of those bins.

Being used to the whole drill frees me to look around a little and that’s what I like best.

This time I saw a chubby eight-year-old talking to his toy in a high squeaky voice. I also saw many grownups doing that but the toys in their cases were  their phones.

I saw a hipster in a T-shirt reading 'Honey Nut Cheerios' staring glumly for 30 straight minutes at his phone.

I saw a family of eight madly snapping pictures of each other, changing positions, forming groupings and calling "Mira Mira!" as they looked at the shots.

Theyoung  flight attendant on the Chicago to St. Louis run looked like Brad Pitt from the back - Brad P the movie Burn After Reading I mean, with his hair half dark and half bleached brassy blond.

At least he looked young until I saw him full face.  He wasn’t really  young at all. AND he had dyed his eyebrows dark.

It's weird what happens to your eyebrows as you age. Mine used to look like Jennifer Connelly’s when she was a child actress doing the movie Labyrinth with David Bowie.

Now they’re like that flight attendant’s a month after his last dye job.

Our family’s new baby has no action in the eye brow department either I notice so I guess that’s the arc of it for us humans. We take off, we rack up a lot of miles, flying here and there and all around and then we turn back into babies. It sounds kind of nice doesn’t it? It sounds like it all might work out after all, even if most of us DON'T win the equivalent of Vera Farmiga at the end of the picture.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7k6FwXJhNk]