Open Mike: The Moment of Divorce

On one of my flights recently I sat next to an engineer from Tennessee whose job is to fly to places like Adelaide and Ljubljana to service the industrial fans his company makes. We were sitting in the bulkhead seats—in my case, the last seats available on the plane—and I joked that we were almost in first class.

He allowed as how he usually did fly first class because, as a Delta "Million Miler," he's given preferential treatment for any empty first-class seat.

He was a private pilot, too, it turned out, who'd been medically disqualified from flying his own four-seat plane half a dozen years earlier. Thinking that he might have seen some interesting things in all those flying miles, I asked him if he'd seen any funny things on board a plane, and he told me that he had once witnessed a divorce happen right before his eyes.

I thought about that for a second and couldn't guess what he meant by it. Here's the story:

He was sitting in the bulkhead seats with another amateur pilot to whom he'd been talking. Opposite them sat a middle-aged couple alone in the row of seats. The plane made a normal approach to the Cincinnati airport, but just before touchdown it got caught in a wind shear. Through no fault of the pilot's, the plane abruptly slammed down hard on the runway. This shook things up in the cabin, and the oxygen masks immediately deployed.

Naturally this caught the passengers unaware, and there was some fear, panic and commotion on board the plane—people screamed and shouted, and passengers reflexively scrambled to put on their masks.

...Even though they were on the ground. Naturally, being pilots, the engineer and his seatmate knew right away they didn't need the oxygen masks—if the cabin lost its last little bit of pressurization, they'd be breathing—well, ordinary surface-level air.

But panic does strange things to people. Opposite them, the wife of the couple had grabbed her oxygen mask and promptly put it on. But her husband, in panic mode, had managed to tangle his mask up with the one next to it, and he couldn't get them clear. The harder he fumbled, the worse the tangle got.

...So, in desperation, he reached over, took his wife's oxygen mask off of her, and put it on himself.

My friend said he and his seatmate immediately burst out laughing, but the woman was incensed. She shrieked "give me back my mask!" and started pummeling her husband. He fought her off, energetically refusing to relinquish the coveted (but of course utterly useless) mask.

The plane had blown a tire on landing, so the fire trucks did deploy, and it took people a while to get off the plane. Eventually the flight attendants came around and told the people wearing masks that there was no need for them. As he realized what he had done, the husband began looking more and more sheepish and pitiful, but the wife's anger didn't abate one bit.

"That's like getting caught in a bank robbery and grabbing your wife as a human shield," the engineer said sagely, in his Tennessee drawl. "You just don't do that. I just looked that poor slob in the eye and said, 'son, that was a bad one. You ain't comin' back from that.'"

Mike
(Thanks to my anonymous fellow traveler)

"Open Mike," the off-topic column of TOP, appears on Sundays. I'm a day late this week, as sometimes happens because our sole employee (me) has an overly lenient boss (also me.)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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[Martin]

This is basically the plot line of the Swedish film Turist, except with a harmless avalanche instead of oxygen masks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Majeure_(film)

[Roger Bradbury]

It didn't occur to the wife that she could share the mask, of course. It looks like it was just the last straw, but for which one, or was it both?

As regards it being Monday this week when Open Mike appeared, while your week starts a day earlier than most people's, there's nothing wrong with honouring Saint Monday once in a while.

[Eolake]

LOL, that's priceless.

I'm reminded of a scene in the hilarious and very much for-adults animated series "Drawn Together", which is a take-off of a "reality show", with various archetypical comics characters living together in a house.
One of them is a Superman clone, "Captain Hero", with pretty much Superman's build and powers, but *none* of Superman's ethics.
At one point a shootout breaks loose in a club, and Captain Hero yells "Hero Shield On!", and grabs a bystanding woman and holds her up as a shield. She is shot to hell, but fortunately for our invulnerable but careful hero, no high-caliber guns are used and no bullets go through her to hit him.
Well, I thought it was funny. You had to see it. Or be a bastich.

[Michael Cytrynowicz]

Perfect story.

[Stan B.]

That Swedish film seemed to be a remake of The Loneliest Planet with Gael Garcia Bernal which features a lovely honeymooning couple confronted by some gun toting locals (believe in the scenic wilds of the country of Georgia). Upon first encounter, the husband momentarily (momentarily!!!) places his wife between him and their rifle. Downhill from there...

[Jake]

Isn't it interesting to watch how the deeply seated indifference of one person for another can manifest itself in the oddest ways? Those indifferences or hatreds are not uncommon, it's just the context in which they show up that can often make them seem unusual.

[Ed Hawco]

Martin beat me to it; reminds me of "Turist" (AKA, "Force Majeure"), which I watched last week and really enjoyed. Aside from the avalanche, it's a pretty quiet film; all the energy is in the subtle and not so subtle fluctuations of the relationship as the couple struggles with the aftermath of what might or might not have been the man's cowardice, or at least his apparent lack of heroism.

[Dge]

I once pissed off the pilot on a flight. Luckily it was as everyone was deplaning anyway.

Came in for a normal landing and this guy FLOATS it in and lands what must have been halfway down the runway.

Hate that!

So as we are walking off and they are standing there saying good bye, I asked the Captain if he was Air Force. Sure enough. Yep.

Well I respond that just because God gave you all that runway doesn't mean you have to use it.

He was not pleased.

[Joe Kashi]

Dge must be a naval aviator, always aiming for the number three cable on a short, heaving,moving runway.

I have flown up here in Alaska for about 32 years and have also litigated a fair number of air crash cases. My spouse, a psychologist, does NOT appreciate my unfortunate penchant for blithely recalling various mishaps that have occurred (to others, thankfully) while our airliner is on the takeoff roll or when landing in bad IMC. She notices that grey hair in the seats forward of us seems to get a bit greyer as my stories progress. Bumpy approaches seem to work best.

[Robert Roaldi]

We should all be grateful that we're not placed in "life and death" situations very often. :)

[Ed]

Curious legal question: had it mattered and she suffered harm, presumably the man have been guilty of some kind of unlawful assault or killing.

[Roger Bartlett]

Living in north Queensland, I heard a similar story of a young husband pulling his wife from the boat's swimming ladder in order to get out of the sea first when a shark approached while skindiving over a coral reef.
They are still married but it would have been emotionally frosty for a few hours despite the balmy weather.