Wonder changes people
I fly a lot. I’m not a Million Miler, but for a while I was more fluent with my SkyMiles number than I was my own address. I learned quickly how to spot an amateur traveler, which lines to avoid based on which TSA agents appeared the most angry and which concourses had the best food. It’s fluency in a language I didn’t want to speak. I became jaded, glaring at anyone that didn’t know the rules of a professional traveler. I grunted at flight attendants as they passed, asking for double-shots of coffee. Black.
Where I live, the airport has a train. The last stop leads to an escalator bank pulling travelers from the bowels of the federally-regulated human conveyor belt to sunshine. Inevitably, there’s a rush — a literal running of grown adults — toward the escalators. Once on, people begin to relax. They ran to stand, but now the unplugging begins. I always look back at the herd of humanity muscling their way on to the moving stairs. It’s not our finest moment.
But such is traveling: moving from point-to-point through a labyrinth of illogical and inefficient processes as a member of a mass. The more compliant we all are, the quicker we all get out. It feels so Orwellian.
Over the years, I’ve talked to enough flight attendants and pilots to know that they’re in the same game we are: get in, get there, get out. The good ones maintain some of the romance.
Then a first-time flyer boards and everything changes. The theater of it all is quite romantic when viewed as such. The costumes, smells, lights, scripts are all so theatrical. Eyes light up when the seat begins to rumble and when the magic cart of snacks and drinks rolls down the aisle looks less like surgical cart and more like the cart of chocolate frogs on the train to Hogwarts.
I recently flew with my son — a first time flyer. The flight crew was fantastic, letting him sit in the cockpit with the Captain, ask innumerable questions and even push a button or two. He couldn’t stop giggling.
What I began to notice was with every burst of laughter from my son, a mirrored grin appeared with each attendant. His wonder was contagious. Humanity was restored to each of them. They chuckled as he kept mumbling “we’re in a big metal bird!” They gave him the whole can of Coca-Cola and extra peanuts. His wonder changed everyone around him. The herd mentality of getting 118 butts and bags put away as quickly as possible shifted. Their faces relaxed and their spirit rose. I watched him soften metrosexual, 20-something men and well-seasoned 55+ women. He even got a smirk from a guy in first class.
His favorite was the Captain. A tall, muscular man that fit the role of ‘Captain’ perfectly. I’m certain my son would have followed him from plane to boat to fish restaurant solely based on how he wore his hat. I appreciated his deep personal approachability. The man knew his role at that moment was to sow wonder, not read a checklist. He taught him how the altimeter worked and let him test the fire alarm (completing a pre-flight check in the process, by the way). Then he reached into his personal bag and pulled out a baseball card of sorts with a picture and details of the plane. My boy carried it as if it were the nuclear launch codes.
On the way home, the flight attendant fed my son as if he were her own grandchild at the Christmas table. I asked about flight wings for him because Captain Great Hat didn’t have any. She opened a number of drawers but couldn’t find any while we boarded. I’m confident she broke a few ‘in case of emergency’ seals as she searched the plane. Suddenly, she appeared with more peanuts for my boy and held out two pins for him, again as if she were passing keys to the secret briefcase he’d be picking up at his next location. As he studied them, she shared with me that she always kept a few extra in her personal bag for just such an occasion.
These sleight of hand subtleties turned the ‘flying metal bird’ into a story somewhere between Polar Express and Mission Impossible. What a gift Delta Air Lines was to my son! What a gift my son was to Delta! That’s the magic of wonder: blurring the possible with the impossible. He was overwhelmed with the dings and lights and buttons and I was overwhelmed with the intentionality of the crew in making his experience memorable. The real magic though, was my son’s ability to soften the most jaded traveler with the power of wonder.