The Mile High Club
Weekly Shot #23
I know you’ve clicked on this Post because you think you’re going to get some juicy details about a sexual experience that occurred 30,000 feet in the air. You think there is going to be some sordid tale over the next thousand words about myself, my wife, the bathroom, and an airplane. Maybe we decided to spice up our sex life by pretending we were strangers meeting for the first time on a plane. Maybe we got lucky and were the only two passengers on a Boeing 757 to Phoenix, Arizona. Maybe we’re rich enough to fly private (LOL). Maybe the plane we travelled on this past week was getting a little too bumpy for our liking and maybe the pilot announced we were going into a tailspin and maybe the last thing the wife and I decided to do before crashing to our deaths was bang each other’s brains out. Who wouldn’t want to read about that?
Welp, sorry to disappoint you. Because none of those things occurred on our flight to Phoenix, Arizona this past week. Why is that? Well, for one, we aren’t animals who would ever have sex in one of those ever-shrinking barely sanitized awful smelling United Airplane bathrooms (or are we?). For two, we had two children under three years old with us.
If you’ve never had to take care of two children on a five-hour flight then you probably have a few extra years to live than I do. I swear my facial hair has sparked about fifty new greys just from this experience alone. I got on the plane as a young man and got off the plane feeling like the president after four years in office.
As much as I wish this piece was about my wife heading to the bathroom, leaving the door unlocked, and me sneaking in after her, the real Mile High Club at this stage in life is changing a poopy diaper while on a packed flight. It’s a club I am proud to be a part of. In fact, it is 100% harder to change the diaper of a 6 month old filled with foul smelling shit in a bathroom the size of a phone booth then it would have been to complete coitus with the old ball and chain my hot wife.
For starters, you have to get the baby to the bathroom. This is a feat in itself because of course, after you start getting a whiff of the mess your little girl just made, you pick her up and realize she has exploded the diaper. There is a little stain of shit on her pajamas and though she smiles at you like she’s done nothing wrong, you now have to somehow get her to the bathroom without offending the rest of the passengers. There is also the little problem of turbulence. One little crosswind and the next thing you know you’ve smacked an unsuspecting passenger in the face with the remnants of a blown out diaper. The walk to the bathroom is treacherous, but there is a silver lining. You quickly find out who the good people on the plane are because the good ones smile at you. They can’t believe a father of all people is taking a child to the back to change their diaper. As you wait in line some people try and make the baby laugh, making faces, awing, cooing. And the really good ones, the best ones, let you cut the line.
But once the walk is over is when the real Mile High work begins because those bathrooms are NOT conducive to diaper changing. They are barely conducive to going to the bathroom and I’m a guy who simply has to stand and aim. I’ve never sat down in one of those atrocious in-air prisons and don’t plan to. I’m even scared to let a fart rip because they are so enclosed that the minute you open the door the entire plane thinks you blew up the bathroom (maybe blew up is a bad term to use when describing anything on a plane, but I digress).
The changing table feels like a 2x2 cardboard box that has been flattened. It sits right above the toilet and could snap off at even the semblance of any turbulence. So as your daughter looks up at you, giggling her head off, she does not realize her life is in terrible danger. One wrong move from the pilot and she’ll go crashing down into the toilet only to be flushed and released into the atmosphere like Mini Me.
It’s a task trying to change a diaper on solid ground. There are so many crevices and layers and places the excrement can go that sometimes you just give your kid a shower instead of wiping them down. So of course this was the type of bowel movement my kid decided to do on our flight. Instead of looking for all the places the mess could have gone I wiped her down from head to toe. I also threw out everything. The wipes, the diaper, her clothes, all stuffed into the garbage that can barely fit a couple of paper towels. The poor person who went in after me must’ve lost a couple eyelashes or even a full brow at the stench we left. That’s the thanks they get for letting me cut the line.
It was a long and arduous trip, my journey to The Mile High Club, but the walk back to my seat was worth it. It was the opposite of the walk of shame. I heard applause from passengers as I made my way back to my seat. Men stood clapping, women fawned over what a good father I was.
My wife even looked at me like I was actually the man she wanted to marry. So even if we didn’t get a chance to make love in the worst place on earth, I’ve set myself up for all future love making. If you ever want your wife to look at you as if you’ve cured cancer, go ahead and become part of the only Mile High Club there is as a dad, the one where you change a malicious diaper 30,000 feet up.
P.S. – The wife and I got lucky. Both of our girls acted like angels decent humans minus the diaper blow up.
P.P.S. – What did people do with kids on planes before TV’s?
P.P.P.S. – I know every plot to every god forsaken Paw Patrol movie. Maybe my next post will be a review of the film.
P.P.P.P.S. – It won’t.
Funniest article yet Alex!!!! 😘