I find the safety demonstration genuinely moving and I watch it every time with complete sincerity which I know makes people uncomfortable.
I have watched hundreds of them, and never once looked away. I can’t get past the nature of what is being offered… here’s a stranger who does not know my name is taking time to tell me specifically how not to die, she has practiced this for me, in a room somewhere.
I know planes are safe but the thought of being suspended in a flying tube fitted with turbines still makes me thing that all safety procedure might be just futile at some point, so perhaps it’s the futileness of the safety demonstration what touches me… maybe part of my brain has always received it that way and I stopped correcting that part a long time ago because I don't think it's wrong, I watch her hands pointing at the exit, her face, I watch the small place below her jaw where her pulse is.
I try to communicate with my attention alone that I am here and that I am listening,, that I am probably the only person in this cabin who is truly present with her in this moment… and I think on some level she can feel that.
The oxygen mask is where I feel it most “Place your own mask before assisting others” she is looking somewhere above our heads when she says it, and I am looking directly at her, and for a moment I feel closer to her than I do to most people I have known for years. She is telling me how to survive, and that folks is, honest, quite a lot and I always say thank you when I board and I mean a real one, held a half second too long.
Most of them look a bit startled which I understand. But One attendant many years ago held my gaze back just for a moment, I have thought about her on every flight since, when the cabin dims and the engines settle in their roar and we are all suspended together in the dark trusting each other completely and close than we would ever choose to be on ground.
I really have never told anyone this but I am aware that changes nothing.