Opinion: Rusty addresses airlines, music annoyances

Takeoff

Question: What do you like best about airline flying?

Answer: Many possible answers spring up.

1. Arriving two hours early for a 6:30 a.m. flight.

2. Standing in long lines with driver’s license in hand and waiting for a baggage check.

3. Necessary but obnoxious security lines where you take off your shoes and hope you don’t have something in your carry-on bag that is not allowed this week but was acceptable last week.

4. Canceled/delayed flights.

5. Airline seats with enough legroom to accommodate tall 4-year-olds.

6. Feeling yourself age while sitting on a taxiway, waiting for takeoff.

7. Missing connecting flights because of No. 4.

8. Long layovers adrift in an airport the size of Delaware and Rhode Island.

Landing

Moving from air to ground travel, a question about freeways. In most cases, freeway driving saves time; however, other features may trump the time advantage.

Question: What is your favorite feature of driving on high-speed freeways?

Answer: 1. The white-knuckle feeling of anxiety overtaking you while trying to blend into a line of traffic moving in excess of the speed limit.

2. Understanding what it’s like to be a NASCAR driver.

3. As your mind turns to NASCAR, you realize race drivers are well-trained, they wear the latest in safety clothing, and their cars are built to survive enormous crashes.

4. That trapped feeling of being the only automobile in sight because in both lanes behind and ahead of you are only semitrailers, all going faster than you want to go.

5. When for reasons unknown, traffic in both lanes comes to a standstill. You hope it isn’t an accident, but it seems obvious that no one is going anywhere for a while.

6. When you are in the wrong lane approaching your exit and can’t change to get to it. You roar past your exit and begin calculating the new route and time involved in reaching your destination.

Turn it up! … Huh?

The next question is one I have long-pondered. I ask it in hopes that someone might have a rational answer.

Question: Why do young people play music in their cars so loud?

Answer: I have no idea. I suppose youngsters would say, “I like it loud.” Live bands crank up the decibels to the absolute edge of human endurance. Home sound systems are played equally loud.

It must follow that most teen ears are tuned to a “natural” level so their cars emit noises literately shaking nearby building foundations.

A follow-up question with an obvious answer: Have you ever heard classical music, jazz, easy listening – anything but rock, hip hop and the like – blasting from a car?

The answer is a no-brainer.

I would be shocked if, while waiting for a traffic light to change, anyone has been treated to an ear-splitting concert by Johann Sebastian Bach, Miles Davis or Frank Sinatra.

Fourth time’s a charm

Concluding this question and answer session, I have one more question; the answer will depend on the number of past experiences with the subject and one’s level of patience.

Question: While making a telephone call, you are placed on hold. How many times must you hear a disembodied voice say, “Your call is important to us,” before you completely lose it and shout at no one in particular, “If my call is so important, hire someone to talk to me!”?

Answers will vary, but I suspect it doesn’t take many announcements to turn even the most patient caller into a chafing, irate monster ready for battle.

My boiling point kicks in at four. How about you?

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.[[In-content Ad]]