Originally published in August 2021
Most of the time, I take no issue with the unspoken rules of air travel. Keep your shoes on, your mouth closed, and don’t bring anything edible onboard that has a recognizable smell. These are basics of decency and respect and as a member of the human community I’m happy to fall in line. However. It has come to my attention following an embarrassing amount of time spent on my phone while my television was also on that one of the assumed rules of air travel is “lower your shade” to which I reply no the fuck I will not.
Lower my shade? Are you of sound mind? We’re in the actual sky right now, Steven—the thing we can typically only gaze at in bewilderment from below with necks at awkward angles and you want me to pretend this isn’t happening so that you can take a little snooze or watch Infinity War for the 80th time without a glare? Get fucked! The glory of our planet (what’s left of it) is on display and I paid good money for a front row seat.
People who want—nay, expect—everyone aboard to lower their shades for their own ocular comfort should stick to night flights. If you need darkness Stacy, fly in it. I’m a natural early riser who still finds awe and wonder in the bounty our planet gives us because I’m not an absolute asshat and any anyone who can flippantly ignore these cloud formations should be actively ready to catch these hands. I planned to see the sun come up on its own turf, you don’t want a piece of this.
This isn’t your own personal nap pod, it’s a Delta shuttle, and the fact that you can ignore seeing the horizon line curve before your very eyes tells me everything I need to know about you as a person. Nothing brings you happiness anymore, does it? Life is just one big conference call to suffer through. You can no longer delight in the wonders of nature and I bet you’re shit in the sack.
We can watch actual storms happen from new angles up there. Is there joy left in you? Wonders of our life-giving planet at $534 a pop with a layover in Minneapolis? Nah, none for me, I’m just gonna snuggle up to my square piece of felt and oversized cotton ball and nap like a three-year-old who’s a good boy for mommy.
It’s a fight, and the window seat always wins. Whatever opinion you hold, if it doesn’t match that of the person with command of the almighty shade, you’re going to make life a living hell for them, aren’t you? Too-audible sighs of exasperation while trying to sleep (it’s just too bright in here!). And if the window seat person takes pleasure in feasting their eyes on the actual goddamned stratosphere there are eye rolls so deep they go all the way back to the flight’s point of origin. Grumbles and grunts every time someone needs to pee as if standing and sitting again is a massive imposition upon one’s day even though if you were at home you’d be doing it so many more times. Refusal to pass trash to the flight attendant—I know your kind, you dick.
This battle between uppers and downers has led me to adopt an aisle seat preference for the sake of my mental health. Sometimes I get a shade-closer, sometimes a real person sits there. It’s always a gamble, but I like morning flights and those are usually the ones with kids on them, and since they’re not dead inside yet they usually appreciate an open shade and the wonders that lay before it. For like ten minutes and then they’re on an iPad. Honestly sharing a plane with children has improved of late.
It’s glorious out there. How dare you ask me to ignore it? You’re honestly telling me you’d shun the light of a whole-ass star in favor of reading via something with the potency of a dying junk-drawer flashlight? That’s better to you? Animals. You’re all animals. Every time you pull an airplane shade down you’re spitting in Mother Nature’s eye and telling her you want to go live at Dad’s house. And I, for one, am finished participating in the charade that yours is the opinion of preference.
I am shade-up, as we should all be. I don’t ignore the wonders this planet affords me, I thank them. I drink them in with my eyes. I might be on my way to see the works of the Louvre but dammit if the heavens above aren’t one hell of an amuse bouche. Shade-down people, with their peasantry, are thumbing their noses at Earth, at life. At those neat circle shapes on farms. I will no longer pretend like you’re the cool ones, the right ones. You’re dipshits, and I see you for what you really are—I have plenty of light.