Airports are stressful, infantilizing places.<\/p>\n
Whenever I’m in one I think of some punitive elementary school. There’s an entire galaxy of largely symbolic rules, and everything associated with us is measured, weighed and timed. And as you stand in line you find yourself worrying about whether you remembered to bring your phone charger. Or your cool sneakers. Or your medicine. And so it goes, and never for a second do you forget that what you are about to do may be the last thing you ever do in your life.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n Flying is something of a miracle, and we’re all, at least partially, expecting it to fail. And who can blame us for this suppressed expectation? Any time a plane crashes it’s international news. When the story breaks, people all over the world, those doing dishes or clicking \u201clike,\u201d are wondering just how they would have behaved in their last terrified moments as fire, cloud and sky sped by.<\/p>\n And please don’t forget the terrorists.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n They might materialize at any moment. If you forget this, there is a terror alert, like a goal-thermometer on a fundraising marathon, warning you that today, the day you’re to give your first professional speech, the terror alert is ORANGE.<\/p>\n So air transit, even in a best case scenario, is a tense thing.<\/p>\n I imagine that Dr. Dao, the man who was dragged bleeding off a United flight earlier this week, was feeling some of this tension and uncertainty as he waited for his plane to fly him home to Kentucky.<\/p>\n Now we’ve all seen the video, and everybody knows that what took place was wrong.<\/p>\n