Flying by the Seat of My Pants: Flight Attendant Adventures on a Wing and a Prayer (3 page)

A
t exactly 9:00 a.m., I let myself into the house, avoiding the cat sitting on the stove, the three-legged dog on the couch looking out the window at the hamster, and the meat-eating fish. I got the phone, which had a very long cord, and pulled it out to the camper. I needed privacy as I dialed (literally) for dollars.

I prayed God would herd me to deliver the pitch of my life. Then I comforted myself with the fact that I had nothing to lose, except the job of my dreams, which it seemed I’d already lost. I mean, I was a day late for the interview.

Reading the ad again before I dialed, I realized the number provided at the bottom was for an outside recruiting firm—a recruiting firm I had actually used when I was a big shot in personnel. This would make it easy; I’d appear as one of them. Or better yet, as someone who used to employ them.

Wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove
. Those words kept going through my mind as I started speaking to the girl who answered the phone. “Hi, I’m Marsha Marks.” (Except that I used my maiden name and acted like they should recognize it.) Fortunately, they did.

“Hi, Marsha, we haven’t heard from you in so long. How are you?”

“I am just great. But listen, I only have a minute, and I need to get some information from you. You know that ad you guys ran in Sunday’s paper about the airline?”

“We’re done with that.” The girl was matter of fact.

“Yeah, I know.” I tried to sound casual. “I was just wondering what airline that ad was for. I mean, I know you’re done, but my friend and I are just curious.”

“World Tour Airlines,” she said. “Okay,” I said. “That’s cool. They’re here in the Bay Area, right?” (It was a guess.)

“San Francisco,” she said.

“Right.”

As soon as I hung up the phone, I called information and got the number. Then I called World Tour Airlines and asked
to speak to the person who hired the firm that placed the ad. I knew that if I asked to speak to personnel, I’d never get through. Or worse, if I told them I wanted a job, I’d never get through. So I said I had a question about the ad. Which I did. My only chance to get through was by identifying myself as a former personnel manager with a question.

The recruiter for WTA came on. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Marsha Marks, and I noticed the ad from last Sunday’s paper.”

“We’re done with that,” she said, ending her part of the conversation.

“Yes, I know, but I just wanted to tell you, as a former personnel manager for”—I inserted the name of the parent company I used to work for—“I’ve come across someone who would be perfect for that job. She didn’t see the ad until today, and I just wanted to tell you that, quite frankly, you missed a fabulous person. I mean, I’ve worked as a personnel manager for a long time”—a year and a half was a long time in my book—“and this person is amazing.”

I gave a low whistle as if looking at the person right that moment. “I can’t tell you how perfect she would be for you. She is tall and gorgeous”—hey, some people would say that—“and thin”—if you count low double-digit sizes thin—“and outgoing, funny, and gregarious! I’m so sorry you missed her.”

“Does she speak any foreign languages?” she asked. She
was at ease now that she could see I was a fellow recruiter, a kindred spirit in the field of personnel.

Now, I could say hello in about eight different languages. So I answered honestly. “I don’t think she’s, you know, fluent in any other language.
But
she can say hello and things in at least eight languages. I’m telling you, I wish I could hire her. She is so amazing. She could be a model. She just lights up a room when she walks in.”

I was on a roll now.

“Wow! She sounds wonderful. I mean, if she’s half what you’re saying, she sounds great. Who is she?”

I took a deep breath. Sometimes, all that’s needed in a pitch is a dramatic pause. “You’re speaking to her,” I said.

The roar of laughter at the other end of the line told me I had her. “You’re kidding? You’re kidding me?” She kept saying that. Then, I heard her call someone over and repeat the whole pitch. Finally she said, “Hold on a minute.”

When she came back on the line, she said, “You missed the first cut, but we’re doing our second and third interview cuts tomorrow. Can you be in downtown Oakland at eleven?”

“Yes,” I said. I had to act like this was a better deal for them than for me. “I’ll be there!”

“Now, you don’t have the job,” she said. “You still have to make the second, third, and fourth cuts. But you just talked yourself past the first interview.”

And past a résumé screening
, I thought.

I showed up, made the cuts, and that’s how I got my first flight attendant job a day late for the interview.

After training, the company paid to move us to different bases, so I was able to leave my tin can in the front yard. Not a moment too soon either. The owner wanted her camper back. She said she wanted to sell it as an antique.

T
here was another reason why the flight attendant job was perfect for me. I had not discussed this reason with Janie. Of course, she knew about it but had never brought it up after she heard the diagnosis. I think she was trying to spare me more emotional trauma.

I had been diagnosed with benign tumors.

I know you’re thinking,
Benign tumors? If they are benign, where is the emotional trauma in that?

Well, I didn’t know they were benign when I discovered them, okay? I thought they were something horrible. I knew
they were disfiguring and fast growing. I mean, I had observed them. And I had already spent a lot of time mourning the loss of my legs, my mobility, and my life potentially cut short. Which, quite frankly, had worn me out. Mourning takes a lot of energy, even when you’re simply mourning what might happen.

I first noticed the tumors growing at the tops of my legs about six months into the personnel manager job. My first six months on that job were a whirlwind of furnishing my new office, attending lavish celebration dinners and big business lunches, and working long hours trapped behind my desk. And on weekends, I had to go into the office to catch up on endless paperwork.

I’d bought a lot of suits for this corporate job and was chagrined to realize that just when I thought I had gotten a job where I could wear anything I wanted, I couldn’t. Uniforms were as much the order of the day in corporate America as they were on waitress jobs. It’s just that the uniform was a dark fitted suit with a soft tailored blouse. It was a lot more expensive than a waitress uniform, and my company didn’t pay for it.

It was because of those uniforms that I first noticed the tumors. There was one particular suit that suddenly looked funny around my thighs. On closer inspection, I noticed the growths. Abnormal, irregular growths. Precancerous, or perhaps horribly rotting, full-of-something-worse-than-cancer growths.

I called an oncologist and described them. Irregular in appearance, about six inches in length and two inches wide. Yes, they definitely had been growing at a very fast rate. In fact, they weren’t there just six months before. The nurse was alarmed and rushed me right in. I felt sorry for the person who had to be canceled to make room for me, but she was just a surgery follow-up. I was, quite possibly, near death.

The doctor had a thick German accent, but his nurse spoke perfect English. She was there while he examined my tumors and spoke softly to calm me down. The doctor looked at the tumors and listened as I told him when they first appeared and how fast they were growing. He poked them and moved them slightly He studied them for what seemed like several minutes. The office was deathly quiet while he and I looked at my legs and I began to realize how much I’d miss them.

Tears filled my eyes at the thought of what would be.

I’d already called everyone I knew who prayed, including the head of the prayer committee at a large church in my town. I could hardly speak by the time I got her on the phone, I was so caught up in the emotion of my tumors.

Weeping, I told her how I discovered them and that I’d been so busy on my job, I just hadn’t noticed them before, but now the day was here for the appointment with reality. I’d heard she had a prayer chain that would alert five hundred people by phone. They would call each other, one by one, and
each one would pray that I’d be brave enough to face the fate I had to face.

The doctor looked up from his examination. He sat back in his chair and pushed his glasses up to the top of his head. He spoke, but his accent was so thick I could hardly understand him.

“Vat vee have here is cellulite.”

I had never heard of cellulite. I thought it might be a new type of tumor.

“Cellulite?” I said, crying openly now. “What kind of tumor is that?”

“Vat kind of tumor? Zees a Food Activated Tumor,” he said. “Ze acronym is F-A-T.”

Oh my, it was worse than I thought. I had activated tumors. And who would ever believe it, horror of horrors, tumors that were activated by food? Then slowly, like sunrise over the ocean, it began to dawn on me. Food Activated Tumor. Initials are F-A-T.

“F? A? T? Are you saying I’m fat? A food activated tumor?” I was incredulous. “You’re saying I’m fat, aren’t you? Well, I can tell you right now, I’m not fat. I never have been fat. And I never will be. It’s impossible. I mean, they called me Olive Oyl in grade school because I looked like Popeye’s girlfriend. I am not fat.”

The oncologist suddenly felt sorry for me. He started asking
me questions about my job. He helped me to realize the tumors had not been there before the desk job. And that I had been eating a lot of rich food and sitting at a desk for ten hours a day.

“Not exercising at all,” he said. “You’re not young anymore. Your metabolism has slowed down.” (I was barely twenty-nine years old.)

I left his office. And realized I had to get a job that involved a little exercise.

But first I had to call that lady who headed up the prayer chain. She said she would be waiting for my update.

“How did it go?” she said gently. “Have they scheduled surgery?”

I didn’t want to tell her about the whole awful discovery of Dr. Shocking Truth. So, I just said, “They are using another means to shrink them because, actually, they are benign. Benign tumors.”

This experience was the beginning of my wanting to get out of corporate America. Out of a job where all I did was sit and eat and then go out and eat. I needed a job offering a little more exercise.

Although the job of flight attendant hadn’t come up yet, I would remember the tumors when it did and think,
Now this is a job where you can move around all day, not sit watching tumors
.

Throughout my first twenty-two years of flying, I never told another flight attendant about my tumors. They disappeared about six months into the job anyway. We really did walk around a lot.