Take the 'A' train to Elite-town

Hey!  I’m elite!  Who says I’m not elite?! 

I’m elite, I tell ya!  By definition.  And I don’t mean MerriamWebster’s middle-of-the-road, everybody-gets-it definition.  I’m talking about the big time, high falootin’, scientific, cultural definition.  You know - the one from American Enterprise Institution’s Fellow, Charles Murray.  That’s right. 

According to Mr. Murray, even someone like me can live in can “elitist bubble” if she cannot identify the NASCAR driver pictured in his quiz about the culture gap in the United States.  Those NASCAR guys all look the same to me (Sorry, Danica!); so that’s a step on the elitist staircase. 

Ever see “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”  Me neither!  Step two!  I’m ascending toward elite-osity!   

Step 3:  I don’t hang out with people who smoke (unless they’re my friends and the patch just doesn’t work for them).  It turns out being a non-smoker is elite! 

Step 4:  All my friends made good grades, or at least they could have if they hadn’t gone anti-establishment and failed deliberately to get back at “the man.” 

This is so exciting!  After all those anxious years of yearning to be in, only to be sadly, awkwardly, gawkily out.  Painful memories linger!  So I was jazzed to stumble across Mr. Murray and his quiz.  

His measure of one’s residence in the “elite bubble” encompasses 25 questions to help determine a quizzee’s status by examining her activities.  He does this rather than calculating her earnings as do more traditional gauges of social status or preeminent elite-ness.   

For example Murray wants to know if you ever worked in a job where a part of your body hurt at the end of the day.  Duh!  I was a high school principal!  My brain hurt constantly!  That’s a pretty important body part.  AND my feet hurt too!   

But oops.  Pain in the anatomy gets chalked up on the non-elite side of the ledger. 

Evidently, the upper crust doesn’t relate to physical pain from work…hmmm. 

But I never worked on a factory floor, so I have that goin’ for me on the elite bubble point scale.   

What’s this?  Uh oh.  I’ve been fishing in the last five years.  Darn it!  I used bait, too!  A worm on a hook!  Yikes.  You can take the Okie out of the state, but she’ll never shake that hankerin’ for catfish.  Catch ‘em and skin ‘em; fry ‘em up with hushpuppies; add a red beer!  Now we’re talkin’! 

No fancy schmancy flies.  Catch and release?!  What’s the point? 

Oh…Methinks I doth digress too much.  I’ve wandered afield from the posh confines to which I aspire to become accustomed. 

Returning to Mr. Murray’s questionnaire, he wants to know if you have a close friend who’s an evangelical Christian, or a close friend with whom you have strong and wide-ranging political disagreements.  

Do I have to count family?  

‘Cause there’s my crazy “Uncle Earl” (name changed to protect the guilty).  When he learned how I voted in the 2012 election he called me a “sympathizer.”  And the last time I went to church with his family, the sermon was entitled “Satan Wants You Dead.”  

Decidedly non-elite.  

I don’t like this stupid survey anymore.  

I scored 12.  Middle of the pack.  Foot in both worlds kind of a deal.  Neither mainstream American nor elite American.  

Oh well.  Doesn’t matter.  I can hang out with the whoopti dos.  I can fit in.  I can blend.  I even get a little cocky with my adroit schmoozing.  

But inevitably I expose my non-elite side by lifting my Diet Coke when everyone else is ready to tilt stems on their Pinot. 

When I’m at the other end of the spectrum, family picnics can get a little icy.  My cousins don’t like it when I correct their grammar.  I guess elite people know how to keep their mouths shut.  You don’t see them rolling their eyes when someone shows up with a baby stroller and a six-pack of Bud Lite. 

So to heck with the elite bubble!  I’m happy here in my Lake Woebegone bubble, where all the women are strong; all the men are good looking; and all the children are above average.  No one to look down on and no snob left behind.
 
That’s my kind of elite.

Angel on Flight #000

I had a singular experience on United Airlines.  It couldn’t be an official designation, but I wore an invisible tiara: Passenger of the Day.  Or something. 

I don’t want the lovely young flight attendant who made me feel special to get into trouble, so I’ll not mention the exact flight number or her name.  Suffice it to say it was going to be a long return flight home to the San Francisco Bay Area.

I’d already completed the first leg and was waiting out my 2-hour layover in the boarding area at Chicago O’Hare.  I nibbled on a biscuit and sipped a fake Jamba Juice, believing the four-and-a-half hour flight home would include a “meal” (the airline’s euphemism for cellophane-wrapped food-shaped facsimiles); but I had become preoccupied with food.  Like the chicken hawk in a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, I converted all objects in my range of vision into drumsticks in the thought bubble over my head. 

That’s when the flight attendant swept past me with a white paper fast-food bag in her hand.  She sat not too far away and began to dig into the bag’s contents. 

“What did you get to eat?”  I called across to her. 

She looked up and smiled as though I were a normal person, not the greedy, salivating scavenger I’d become.  “Just wondered what the locals eat at the airport,” I went on as though any of this could be appropriate.

“Johnny Rockets is always good,” she said, friendly.  “Burger and a salad,” she continued, holding up a molded plastic container with a garden salad for my edification.

“They’ll feed us on this flight, right?”  Was I howling?

“Depends on where you’re sitting,” she smiled again, apologetically this time. 

I didn’t get it right away:  They feed folks in first class.  When I said 22D, right over the wing, she replied gently this time, “We’ll have snacks for purchase.”

I waved my thanks and turned back to my book so she wouldn’t feel obligated to keep me at bay.  But a few minutes later, she swept toward me again, this time leaving me a small bag of Garrett's popcorn, “A Chicago Tradition.”  What a nice person.  Who does that?

And let me just say, if you’re ever in Chicago, get some Garrett's popcorn!  I tried to make it last, but like our Lab with his kibble, I fear I snarfed it down. 

I’d been relegated to Seating Group 8, the last clutch in the boarding hierarchy, a “Z” in the alphabet of boarding castes.  Ahead of me were all the really cool passengers in first class, the mileage elite, grannies with walkers and mommies with strollers, and anyone else who didn’t have a lean and hungry look.

She greeted me again when I trundled onboard, then it wasn’t long at all before she stopped next to me in the aisle to ask if I’d like something to drink. 

“Diet Coke.”

“Right away,” she said, and sure enough in moments I had a cup of ice and chilled silver can.  I looked around to note that no one else around me had a drink.  Odd.  But no one glanced my way.  They didn’t seem to covet my bounty as I would have coveted theirs. 

Later, another flight attendant threaded his cart down the aisle, rolling and stopping, rolling and stopping.  He asked by rote if I wanted a drink when he saw the Coke.  He registered a query, but said only, “And you have that!” and moved on.

I watched her as she went about her duties, observing her open countenance and relaxed smile.  She liked the passengers.  Pretty much every one of them, as far as I could see.  She listened with genuine interest to each routine request, encouraged banter, smiled, and smiled again.

She brought me a cup of ice water about midway through “We Bought a Zoo,” and wondered if I needed anything else.  No, I couldn’t think of a thing.  Nevertheless, when she passed me again, she tucked a small brown envelope containing a warm chocolate chip cookie into my hand, contraband smuggled from the privileged ones.

What a little miracle she was that day.  How sweet her unexpected gifts.

I craned my neck but could not see her to wave and smile my final thanks and return the tiara.  She must have sat at the back for our landing.

That’s how a true angel does it – expecting nothing.