Flying high

Finally, I can get around to telling you about being a flight attendant.  I am so thankful for you guys and for this blog!  It takes my mind off the other garbage that's going on in my life but don't worry, I'm fixin' to word vomit about all that later.  I just can't right now because it would be nothing but a big mess of curse words and it would make zero sense.  Maybe tomorrow.


For the original questions, go to the comments here.


So what about being a flight attendant?


Oh yeah, that's right!  I had a life before I got married!  A great one!  I mean, not that my married life isn't great.....because it is......at times.  Let's just leave that alone, shall we?


After high school, I went to the community college around the corner from my house because I got a full scholarship.  I got another little scholarship that covered books for the first year so I figured why not go since it was all paid for.  I had no idea what I wanted to do, I didn't know what interested me, so I just took the basics.  School has always been easy for me so it wasn't a big deal - quite often my best friend and I would skip class and go to breakfast and I still got great grades.


Suffice it to say, there wasn't a great fire under my ass for school so I wasn't too keen on going away to a four-year college.  I didn't want to leave my parents but I was super bored with community college.  One day I was looking in the paper doing some work for my dad and I came across an ad looking for flight attendants.  It was so cheesy - Get paid to see the world!  Meet amazing people!  It will never suck!


I bought into it and went to their open house, where they gave their spiel in real life.  I have to admit, I was swayed by the ultra-professional blue uniforms and they did look like they were having fun.  I went through the preliminary testing and I got weighed!  I didn't know they did that anymore but apparently weight is a big deal for those tiny planes!  I remember having to move people from the front to the back of the plane for weight distribution.  Anyway, I passed and made it to the next round that day.  I was 19 and it was for American Eagle, the commuter for American Airlines.  I had never been away from home longer than Drill Team camp in the summer and I was terrified.  I cried the entire way to Dallas but the only reason I went for it was because my parents constantly reassured me that if I didn't like it I could come straight home.


Our home for training was the Wilson World hotel and I shared a room with another girl, but very quickly our floor became like a college dorm and we frequently spent late nights in each others' rooms talking and laughing and sometimes crying about how much we missed our families.

My class on ditching day.  Because you know, 

we might crash into that errant patch of water 

on the way from Dallas to Lawton, Oklahoma.

Eagle training was the first time I went out to a club, the first time I went to a country bar, the first time I got turned away from a bar for using a fake ID - from TEXAS no less!  Who is so naive that they try to use a fake ID from Texas IN Texas!  That would be me.

After eight weeks of intensive training, I graduated.  My parents flew down and it was actually really cool!

Two of my instructors - I remember Penny on the left.

I can't remember the other one's name!

Give me a break, this was over fifteen years ago!

UPDATE:  WENDY was on the left, Penny was on the right!  It's been bugging me ever since I wrote this!

In our first apartment, we were six.  Of course, we were never all there 

at the same time so it was fine.

Amy and Kristina were two of my roommates.

Me and my dad at our class picture

Those first few months I flew home every set of days off I had.  I would often get off work and go straight into the American terminal and get on the first flight to Kansas City.  Many times I went a month without going to my apartment.  I would only stop by to leave my check for my portion of the bills.

One of the times I surprised my mom at home

However, I really enjoyed the job.  We were all young, even the pilots.  We were all broke, but we didn't know it.  I dated a pilot, I broke up with a pilot and generally it was a lot of fun.  I was often the only flight attendant on the plane so it was my show, my party.  I had fun with my people and I don't remember too many bad days.  I mean yeah, getting up at 4am for a 6am flight really sucked, passengers were rude and there was that one time I had an unaccompanied minor and he got airsick and puked everywhere and *I* had to clean it up, but that didn't happen every day.  And sure, the hotels were crap, we were flying to places like Fayetteville, Arkansas and I was homesick a lot but I really do look back on that time with fond memories.

I hemmed my dress and cinched my belt and you couldn't tell me nothin!

The two Mikes - they were my favorite crew.

Not to mention Mike Evans was mighty easy on the eyes!

He wore the aviator sunglasses and everything!

On my two-year anniversary with Eagle, I went to work for United Airlines.  I had applied with them previously, but they didn't take me because I was a couple weeks shy of turning 19.  Now that I was 21, I was ready to try again.  I was hired and this time Chicago was my home for training.  It was way more intense, learning the fifty-billion steps for an international First Class service, how to evacuate a 747 and I had to learn seven planes that held an anywhere from 120-400 passengers.  It was a big leap from my little 28 and 42-seat puddle jumpers.  Some of my classmates didn't make it - for real y'all, they would come into class, tap you on the shoulder and you never saw that person again!  It was crazy and it was much more stressful, which is why I don't have as many pictures.  Plus, I had baaaad stress acne and there is no way you'll ever see those pictures!  

However, I did get to go to a Chicago Bulls game when Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman were on the team.  That was pretty bad-ass!  We met some guys at a bar, they were enchanted by the flight attendant thing and invited us to join them.  That was the high point of United training!

I was based in DC out of training and my first flight was from DC-LA.  I was so big time!  Flying for United was a blast and this time I wasn't going home as much.  I had a boyfriend in Dallas at that time so I was going back and forth a lot but I did a bit more traveling.  I only wish I'd taken more advantage of the international travel.  I knew girls that blocked their schedules, working 15 days straight and had the rest of the month off and they laid on the beach in Thailand until it was time to come back to work.  I should have done more of that.  

But I'd started modeling by then, so I was traveling to plenty of beaches in between my domestic trips.  I've been to the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Puerto Vallarta, all for modeling trips so no need to pity me.  It really was a great life.

One time my dad flew to Chicago to have lunch with me, dinner with one of his friends,

and flew back to KC that night.  Doing stuff like that was cool.

By 2001, I'd been flying for seven years and I figured it was time for me to go back to college, while I still looked like everyone else.  I was based in LA, living in Dallas, and I had enough seniority that I could pick my schedule.  I flew into LA for work Thursday night, worked the weekend and came home Monday afternoon or evening.  I went to class all day Tuesday and Thursday and it was a pretty sweet deal.

My mom was in town for a week because we'd just moved and she wanted to see our new place and hang out with us for a while.  She arrived Monday night, just before I got home.  Tuesday morning I got up for class.  My 8am class went well but by the time I got to my 9am, there were rumblings that a plane had flown into a building in New York.  My classmates knew I was a flight attendant, so they naturally thought I knew everything.  I'd heard the first plane was an American one, and I naively thought we were okay since we were United.  

By the time I got out of class, the second plane had flown into the tower and the campus was in chaos.  People everywhere were on their cellphones trying to figure out what had happened.  My boyfriend at the time called me and told me he was on his way to pick me up.  I came home and the three of us stared at the tv, horrified at how quickly the planes just disappeared into the towers.  I cried and cried because I had done the Boston-LA flight, the one that was heading for the Pentagon and crashed in the field.  I knew what those flight attendants were doing when they died.  I was so lucky to have arrived home the night before - I heard stories of flight attendants being stranded for weeks in layover hotels - my mom ended up having to drive home.

I didn't work the rest of September and I broke up with that boyfriend shortly after.  It was unrelated, just super extra bad timing.  I was much more dramatic back then, and I dropped out of school.  I flew in October and November, but so much had changed.  In briefing, we were now talking about how to use the coffee pots to knock someone out and using blankets to restrain them, where to stab someone with your pen if you needed to, and the whole mood of every flight was so surreal.  In December, I took a three-month voluntary furlough and moved back to Kansas City.  I wasn't ready at the end of three months so I volunteered to stay gone for six more months.   I added nine months to the end of that and by the time they called me back I was no longer interested in being a flight attendant.  The shine was gone, the industry was different and I was back in school.  That part of my life was done.

It was a wonderful time and I loved being a flight attendant.  I met some wonderful people, saw some wonderful places that I never would have been able to see otherwise (layover in Sydney, Australia!!) and I truly miss it.  However, I've become quite accustomed to sleeping in my own bed every night and I don't think I have it in me to do six flights in one day anymore.

I still get my fix - only now it's First Class on Drew's frequent flier miles.  It doesn't suck!