06-29-2016, 03:57 PM
My Father died rather unexpectedly, in England. So, I get on the
plane on the West Coast of the USA to begin my flight to the UK via
Amsterdam. It's a ten hour flight, but I'm not worried because
everybody's Dutch. And everyone knows they're good people. So
nobody bombs them, and their planes never crash, and they even rescued
Jews in WWII for Christ's sake, so Nothing Will Go Wrong. OK?
So feeling safe in my aisle seat near the back of the plane, I've been
waiting for this moment. I open my mouth, and pop 3 zolpidem, a
comparatively high dose. I wake up 7 hours later.
Now I know I started off in the aisle seat, but I'm now sitting in the
window seat next to it. I don't actually remember swapping places
with the guy next to me, but that just means I took too much Zolpidem,
famous for traveler's amnesia in high doses. He doesn't speak
English, so I nod to him companionably, and he nods back, seeming
quite content. In fact, apart from waking up one seat over, as far as
I can tell, everything is exactly as it's supposed to be.
So I check my watch. Do the math, subtract 8 hours, carry the one for
Amsterdam, Crap. 3.5 more hours to go. Since it's my right as an
American to remain in a permanently drugged state wherever I am, I
decide to relive my slice of the sixties and, like the ambien pig I
am, I decide to take one more sleeping pill.
Except I can't find my bottle of Ambien, anywhere.
I'm rummaging through my bag at this point, and starting to develop a
serious case of hysteria wondering if I've been robbed in flight, but
my cash and my passport are all still there. The bag has lots of
pockets (supposedly a feature) so I'm still rummaging for my drug of
choice when the cabin purser approaches me and asks me if I'm looking
for something?
She's old, tall, wizened, skinny for a Dutchwoman, but still with that
heft that says she could body check you without breathing
hard. I think briefly of Viking women throwing babies onto enemy
swords. All of the stewardesses look capable of it, and they don't
smile much, if at all. It's a European thing.
"I seem to have lost my sleeping pills" I say. "Oh", she replies, "I
found them and showed them to the captain, and he said that you're
only supposed to take one, and since you've already done that, we're
holding on to them until the end of the flight. You'll get them back
before we land".
This has never happened to me before. Not only
have I've never argued with an air stewardess in my life, but I know
that if you are declared a nuisance, you can end up being jailed when
you touch down. So flabbergasted, I frown, then nod, wondering if
perhaps something tiny but crucial had gotten lost in
translation. I look around, but everyone seems completely oblivious
to my drama.
So I get my book out and read. Sure enough, 3 hours later, just as
we're about to land, the purser returns my bottle of ambien. We're
about to land, so there's no time really to count them, not the easiest
thing to do on the pull-down tray of a plane anyway, but I'd actually spent the
previous evening counting them into the bottle, and I could tell
immediately that it was light. They had removed just about as many as
they dared (about 20 tabs, out of 60). Bonus to them if I disembark
without ever even noticing the bottle is missing, in which case
they'd get to keep the whole lot and say they never saw any sign of it.
So as far as I can tell, per Occam's razor, the Purser (and the
Captain?) conspired together to steal about a third of my ambien,
relying on the fact that I was dopey, jet-lagged, half-asleep, and would presumably
be a continent away by the time I noticed anything amiss.
England exited the EU a week later :-)
Cheers,
BennyLava
plane on the West Coast of the USA to begin my flight to the UK via
Amsterdam. It's a ten hour flight, but I'm not worried because
everybody's Dutch. And everyone knows they're good people. So
nobody bombs them, and their planes never crash, and they even rescued
Jews in WWII for Christ's sake, so Nothing Will Go Wrong. OK?
So feeling safe in my aisle seat near the back of the plane, I've been
waiting for this moment. I open my mouth, and pop 3 zolpidem, a
comparatively high dose. I wake up 7 hours later.
Now I know I started off in the aisle seat, but I'm now sitting in the
window seat next to it. I don't actually remember swapping places
with the guy next to me, but that just means I took too much Zolpidem,
famous for traveler's amnesia in high doses. He doesn't speak
English, so I nod to him companionably, and he nods back, seeming
quite content. In fact, apart from waking up one seat over, as far as
I can tell, everything is exactly as it's supposed to be.
So I check my watch. Do the math, subtract 8 hours, carry the one for
Amsterdam, Crap. 3.5 more hours to go. Since it's my right as an
American to remain in a permanently drugged state wherever I am, I
decide to relive my slice of the sixties and, like the ambien pig I
am, I decide to take one more sleeping pill.
Except I can't find my bottle of Ambien, anywhere.
I'm rummaging through my bag at this point, and starting to develop a
serious case of hysteria wondering if I've been robbed in flight, but
my cash and my passport are all still there. The bag has lots of
pockets (supposedly a feature) so I'm still rummaging for my drug of
choice when the cabin purser approaches me and asks me if I'm looking
for something?
She's old, tall, wizened, skinny for a Dutchwoman, but still with that
heft that says she could body check you without breathing
hard. I think briefly of Viking women throwing babies onto enemy
swords. All of the stewardesses look capable of it, and they don't
smile much, if at all. It's a European thing.
"I seem to have lost my sleeping pills" I say. "Oh", she replies, "I
found them and showed them to the captain, and he said that you're
only supposed to take one, and since you've already done that, we're
holding on to them until the end of the flight. You'll get them back
before we land".
This has never happened to me before. Not only
have I've never argued with an air stewardess in my life, but I know
that if you are declared a nuisance, you can end up being jailed when
you touch down. So flabbergasted, I frown, then nod, wondering if
perhaps something tiny but crucial had gotten lost in
translation. I look around, but everyone seems completely oblivious
to my drama.
So I get my book out and read. Sure enough, 3 hours later, just as
we're about to land, the purser returns my bottle of ambien. We're
about to land, so there's no time really to count them, not the easiest
thing to do on the pull-down tray of a plane anyway, but I'd actually spent the
previous evening counting them into the bottle, and I could tell
immediately that it was light. They had removed just about as many as
they dared (about 20 tabs, out of 60). Bonus to them if I disembark
without ever even noticing the bottle is missing, in which case
they'd get to keep the whole lot and say they never saw any sign of it.
So as far as I can tell, per Occam's razor, the Purser (and the
Captain?) conspired together to steal about a third of my ambien,
relying on the fact that I was dopey, jet-lagged, half-asleep, and would presumably
be a continent away by the time I noticed anything amiss.
England exited the EU a week later :-)
Cheers,
BennyLava
It is Well with My Soul 
![[Image: SyAa0qj.png]](https://i.imgur.com/SyAa0qj.png)
