Jaunted

But it was only towards the end of the flight that we bonded. As we went to the bathroom, we noticed that she’d been cornered in the galley by an over-enthusiastic middle-aged man. When we came out, they were still there. She was being polite and all, but we felt a little uncomfortable for her, so we went over to make some ‘”Hey!!! I’m on AYCJ and I’m soooooo excited!” conversation to break up the enforced tete-a-tete.

Whether it was gratitude, female solidarity or just our extreme charm and charisma, we ended up planning to hang out next time she was in Vegas. Then she let slip that she lived in Buffalo, and we said how funny, we were flying there in a few days to cross off Niagara Falls on our to-do-before-we-die list. She suggested we meet up – she would give us a tour of the Falls, help us find a cheap motel to crash in and then take us to eat Buffalo’s best Buffalo wings. How could we say no?

In the event, we had so much fun that instead of dumping us at a motel, she suggested we stay over at hers. We said yes - we were on our own, Niagara was dead (unless you like socializing with under-age drunk Americans on the Canadian side) and we’d eaten so many wings we just needed to be held.

So she took us to her house where we crashed on her spare water bed. Water bed, people! We’ve wanted to sleep in one since we saw Edward Scissorhands and decided they were the height of Americana. Major win.

Anyways, we gathered some insights on the life of a FA from her and, people, this may come as a surprise, but it’s no Fly Girls. Their crash pads are unsexy dorms, they work crazy hours and they have to do things like help old ladies go to the bathroom and have folks drop luggage on their heads. And then people like us are rude to them because the flight’s delayed or they run out of Animal Crackers or because they dare to ask us to turn off our iPods for landing. Not so glam!

Jennifer said that although she’d never dare do a Steven Slater (she was actually pretty angry about him, pointing out that he could have killed someone if they’d been unloading baggage when the slide came out), rude passengers do bring her down. In fact, when we were telling her about flying in Europe, where we’re from, she looked wistful and said: “Do people respect flight attendants better over there?” (Side note: over the course of the next 30 days on AYCJ, we realized that yes, yes they do.)

The upshot of our encounter? For one, we won’t be huffing next time an officious FA tells us to switch off our laptop. For another, we’re kinda JetBlue fans for life, thanks to Jennifer being a great ambassador. And finally, we’re walking on air now that we’ve fulfilled two of our ambitions: befriending a flight attendant and sleeping on a waterbed.

So on a purely selfish note, you might want to be nice to the ladies and gents in the sky, too. You never know when you might need a spare (water)bed.

Oh, and don't corner pretty FAs in the galley or shove cameras in their faces. That's just a bit gross.

[Photo: All Facebook]