How to board a plane
Featuring Clayton Kershaw
I don’t travel often, but when I do I’m in boarding group 5.
For America Airlines aficionados, this means something. I haven’t looked into it too much because I suspect it will reveal something of my standing in society that I’d rather not know.
Group 5 doesn’t bother me. I feel little motivation to move up to the prestigious 1-4 groups and am really just happy to not be back with all the sad saps in groups 7-9.
Right in the middle is fine. Except for one thing.
This is the group of passengers who stand up by the check-in counter as soon as the plane starts boarding.
They know there are four groups ahead of them. But they create a crowd around the stanchions and glance between their phone and the screen that announces which group is currently boarding. Phone and screen. Screen and phone. Willing the numbers to match at last.
Objectively, this is dumb. I know that.
But I do it anyway.
I like to think that I look less anxious than those around me as I too check my ticket vs. the screen, but I probably don’t. I, like every other person in group 5, want to be the first of my mediocre peers on this plane.
Clayton Kershaw lives life differently.
Recently, I flew from LAX to DFW (not to brag), and seated at my gate was Los Angeles Dodger and two-time World Series Champion, Clayton Kershaw.
Not to spend too much time describing what he looks like, just take whatever image you have of him in your head (or, if not him, just general “professional baseball player”) and add a neck pillow. Freak athlete. Normal looking guy. Pretty tall. That’s who I was about to fly with.
Now obviously, he falls under the “rich and famous” category. So, when they announced that we were now boarding, I was surprised when he stayed in his seat.
Surely, surely, this guy is in Group 1. Has to be. But Group 1 boarded without him. Then Group 2. Then—and I’m ashamed to admit this—I stood up with Group 3 and waited outside the stanchions for my turn.
As I boarded with Group 5, I laughed. I guess being one of the best baseball players in the world doesn’t get you everything. Oh Clayton, you wish you could join me in Group 5. You peasant.
That was my thought when I boarded and sat in row 10 (again, not to brag), and waited to see which group Clayton Kershaw was in. Maybe he booked this flight last minute and got stuck in the back. Maybe his private jet was having maintenance and he didn’t know how commercial flights worked. I don’t know.
But as the plane filled up, I didn’t see him. The bovine-like mass of people filing in was constant, then it dwindled, then it completely stopped.
Then he walked in, turned the corner, and sat in seat 1A.
And that is how you board a plane.
With indifference to your social station and self-assurance that can only come when you accept flying (and life) as something that won’t be improved by a false perception of control or a desire for hurry.
Thanks for reading this far.
-jd
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Content
The Architecture of Happiness - I’ve probably mentioned this book before, but I recently came back to it this week to rediscover this gem: "We are drawn to call something beautiful whenever we detect that it contains in a concentrated form those qualities in which we personally, or our societies more generally, are deficient."
Slow Horses - I’m late to this, but season one was electric. It’s officially the season where we turn on British TV to manifest cold weather in Texas.
Acquired: LVMH - Listen, I finished Hermes and this was the obvious next episode. I remain obsessed.
Camera Roll
I don’t know what the future of sports entertainment looks like, but I got a glimpse of it this last weekend and it was wild. I somehow left this experience wishing I had paid more.
Question
What’s your favorite thing about traveling and how happy are you that I didn’t go back to back weeks on politics? Because I was tempted…
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