Panickers
- There's nothing subtle about these people, they make themselves
known pretty quickly. These are the people who, when push comes
to shove and your world is suddenly all angry Rottweilers, can
be counted on to pack it in and wait to be rescued. Seek these
people out only if you're so damn good at whatever you're doing
that you need the extra challenge of carrying dead weight with
you while you do it.
Last winter I was on an airplane that was coming in for a landing. We got down to about 100 feet off the ground when suddenly the plane gunned it's engines, pulled up hard, and went back up to a few thousand feet. I assumed that there was an obstruction on the runway and we were having to circle for a few minutes until the path was clear again. As I looked around I could see a number of people looking anxiously around at their fellow passengers. Then I heard the landing gear go down, which is weird at a few thousand feet.
A few seconds later I heard the unmistakable sound of the landing gear going back up. Then, after a few more seconds it went down again. Ahh, suddenly things were clear. A moment later the captain came on the intercom to announce that the landing gear on one side of the plane was not coming down and we were awaiting instructions from the tower. The mood in the plane started to get a little odd. I happened to be sitting in an exit row so I started thinking my plan out - in the unlikely event of us having to land without this wheel down. I mentally worked out what I would do in a few different scenarios. I planned for my escape if the landing went relatively smoothly (as far as wheel-less landings go), I planned for the event of a fire, I even planned out my steps in the event that we decided to ditch in the ocean (unlikely but hey, I had time on my hands). In the event that my side of the plane was on fire I reasoned that I would need to use one of the adjacent exits, right across from me, so I took a look at my fellow passengers in the two exit rows on the other side of the plane. Directly across from me was a thin man who had a violent grip on his armrests. He was looking frantically around the plane with great big, oh my God oh my God oh my God, eyes. When he caught my gaze he locked onto it with something alarmingly like desperation. Not being a complete asshole (not all of the time, anyway) I resisted the urge to scream something pithy like, "we're all gonna die," and instead smiled and gave him the thumbs up. He looked at me like I was insane. I began to experience doubts that my fellow manager of an emergency exit would get his door open in a timely manner, should he need to. At least he looked like he could be easily subdued. One row ahead of him, in the other exit row, I spied another fellow passenger in charge of an emergency exit door. He was looking around too, but he was beaming. A big, bright, this is super-cool, smile lit up his face and I knew immediately that I had located my best backup emergency exit. It made me smile too (which really appeared to make things worse for that other poor bastard). We circled around for maybe fifteen more minutes before the captain finally announced that they had managed to get the defective wheel to go down and we were cleared for landing. Upon touching down, several people, including the man across the aisle from me, immediately burst into tears that brought the stewardesses running with Kleenex and little bottles of water. The flight crew was still there consoling them when I left. |
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