Aviation: (n) the flying or operating of aircraft.

Although I am surrounded by the mob which extols the beauty and intelligence of innovation, my perspective is much more cautious. Here’s what I have discovered.

Innovation has a very short shelf life before it is interrupted by human inconsistency, selfishness and ineptness.

I am positive that Wilbur and Orville Wright, when they flew their little contraption on the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, were overjoyed with the sheer brilliance of invention–breaking through a barrier to birth the beginnings of flight.

Never did they envision or comprehend that it all would eventually come down to inconvenience, stale peanuts and cramped seats.

I remember the first time I ever flew in an airplane. I thought I was a god. But in typical human style, over the years we have succeeded in taking something truly remarkable and making it miserable.

Here is the reason:

All the bratty, stupid kids who sucked up to the teachers in high school grew up and ended up in middle management, where the only power they have in their lives is to usurp authority over other people and create obstacles.

They aren’t smart enough to become CEOs. And they’re just a little too smart to be menial laborers.

So the only joy they get in their lives is exactly what they had in school: being the tattle-tales and the jerks who really insisted that you weren’t allowed to take more than one milk in the cafeteria.

So when you go to the airport you are immediately greeted by these soulless authoritarians who want to make your experience as painful as possible.

This is true whether it’s the baggage handler who is convinced that your satchel is over seventy pounds, the TSA agent who thinks your shoes look suspicious, or the flight attendant who wants to argue with you about whether your I-Pad will be suitable for use on the journey through the sky.

Add the fact that some cranky manufacturers created seats more suited to the buttocks of an 8-year-old and you have a torture chamber of inefficient nastiness.

Even though most people realize this to be true, no change is introduced because it is all glossed over with the well-rehearsed statement: “Well, it’s still the best and safest way to travel.”

I still think flying is amazing.

I just wish all the former hall monitors and teacher-ass-kissers would be permanently grounded.

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

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