A Screw's Loose
Trying something new: a little non-music writing
As I figure out how I wanna use Substack, I’m gonna try some things out. So here’s a bit of writing about an experience I part-had, part-invented on a plane awhile back.
The pilot apologized for the delay. A pre-flight inspection had revealed a missing screw. A tech had been summoned and was on his way to install a new, flight-and-safety-restoring screw.
Nobody asked:
”Do we really need it?”
”How long had it been gone?”
”What was the screw keeping intact? A wing?!?”
”Why are you telling us this?
”Is there something metaphoric here about a loose screw?”
”Is ‘loose screw’ just a little….on the nose?”
We just waited. Sort of patiently. A range of patience, maybe I’d say, with the scale going pretty far into the red, when it came to the guy in 18C who was huffing and puffing like he was auditioning for the wolf part in a fairy tale.
The guy in 22B? He’s thinking about the 10am life-altering meeting he was now in jeopardy of being late for or, worse, missing.
Showing up late for life-altering meetings is bad form.
The bro in 18C doesn’t even know there’s a delay. He’s deep in his Air Pods, cranking what sounds like Big Bunny, which I don’t honestly know what sounds like, but it sounds like what I guess it would sound like. For all Air Pod Bro knows, we’re almost there.
The mother of two in the row ahead of me? Thinking about how these extra, non-airborne, captive minutes were prematurely exhausting both her own dutifully hoarded reserves of patience (still in the black, but not unlimited) and composure, as well as the meticulously calculated activities she’d brought along for Aaron and Simone.
Or maybe the mother of two thinks this inconvenience is actually a godsend. A blessing beyond her control, keeping those two little innocent troublemakers—with their sloppy sneezes and outside voices—captive at just this tender, fleeting age, in just this place. Even if it is just a tarmac and recycled air. But keeping them frozen here, hers, for just a few minutes before they disappear into grownup dreams of their own lives and forget her and her boundless love and affection she feels to bursting on this flight delay. Or, much sooner, how they’ll disappear when she cedes them to that deadbeat lowlife Jimmy, who she’s astounded—ASTOUNDED—that she was ever mind-numbingly stupid enough to think she might have loved and who smiles through his fake whitened teeth as he reels in all the glory and highlights of parenting—Disneyland and swimming and ice cream sundaes and late night movies with extra butter popcorn—that he can cram into his measly two weeks—TWO WEEKS—he takes those two angels once a summer while sidestepping in his all-too-Jimmy way the actual heart and soul and work of parenting—cleaning up throwup, homework, rules, whining, carpool, paper mache founding father masks, bullies, Type A moms, laundry, chauffeury, dentist appointments, parent teacher conferences, managing potty talk, leftovers, having to decide between groceries and who knows which thing that women just have as a basic humanity-imbuing non luxury because SOMEBODY can’t keep track of alimony payments and might as well just have been a sperm donor at some point.
Not that she’s complaining. She’s just exhausted. More than a few things heavy on her mind, her chest, the heart within it.
In fact, she just dozed off between the pilot’s announcement and the arrival of the screw.
Sweet dreams, mother of two.