'Airplane,' The Remake Starring Grandpa!

I never for a second doubted the fact that traveling from Los Angeles to the south of France with my soon to be 90-year-old grandfather was going to be quite an adventure. What I didn’t expect was for that adventure to be quite a trip – and I mean a “TRIP” - Hollywood movie style!

Evidently because he is nearly 90 years young and a bit on the slow side when it comes to moving around and having all his mental faculties flawlessly function without failing him once in a very often while, the entire family judged it primordially necessary to have someone escort him on this trip for parental guidance so to speak.

Needless to say, I immediately volunteered to be the designated guide. I can honestly attest to the fact that traveling with a 90 years young – the operative word here being “young” - is much worse than traveling with an infant. At least children gone wild are tamable and listen. Old people don’t– and not just because they can’t always hear you.

Where should I start? Well, how about at the beginning, right? That brings us to the Air France VIP lounge at LAX. As soon as we were done with the airport security ritual, and made our customary Duty Free one-stop shopping spree, grandpa and I promptly headed out to the Air France Business/VIP lounge to indulge in a little royalty treatment courtesy of my auntie’s best friend whom, to our greatest benefit and comfort, works as an executive for the airline company.

I helped my grandpa settle at a table by the window and proceeded to wait on him so he wouldn’t have to move around leaning on his cane. I should tell you that the room was rather packed and that almost half of the other VIPs were spying on us.

Once he was all set with food and drinks, he then instructed me to go fetch some magazines for his intellectual distraction.  I got out of my chair and confidently marched toward the big black wall where all the reading material – magazines, newspapers and even books – was shelved. Standing in front of the magazine rack with my back turned at him, I barely had time to make my selection before something terribly abominable happened. In the midst of a dead silent room – and I mean you could hear a pin drop – suddenly, out of nowhere, a stentorian rather interminably sustained sound of what can only be described as an occurrence of flatulence, of course emanating from my grandpa’s direction, brutally came interrupting the peace and quiet.  I stood there acting completely unfazed as if I hadn’t heard a thing, and much less knew grandpa was the guilty party who had just contaminated the entire room with his massive gas attack. Better to act clueless than show the level of embarrassment that’s taken over your entire being.

“Just act cool and as if you know absolutely nothing,” I kept telling myself. Meanwhile, all eyes were murderously firing in my direction with that patronizingly condemning stare that clearly said: “You’re a very very very bad mom! What kind of manners are you teaching your little one?”  I was expecting one of the victims to bite the bullet and flat out ask my grandpa if he did it.

Suffice it to say, I was beyond mortified not to mention excruciatingly horrified. Yet I successfully maintained my composure acting as if I hadn’t the slightest idea as to what had just happened. But I’m no dummy! No need to gauge the situation here! Of course I knew perfectly well grandpa had just let rip one of the astoundingly noisiest and longest fart ever known to mankind.

I waited until we were alone in the elevator taking us down to our boarding gate to inform him about his firework-like anus symphony.  I couldn’t say anything in the lounge because I was sticking to my “it wasn’t me and I know nothing” guns; plus I didn’t want to yell that kind of stuff. Because surely you know I would have had to scream my lungs out since grandpa stubbornly refuses to wear his hearing aids preferring instead to have us repeat ourselves ten thousand times and damage our vocal chords.

“Grandpa, that was really not discreet,” I said laughingly even though I didn’t find this funny in the least.

“You heard?” he answered surprised as if that was the ultimate shocking news he received.

“Did I hear? You’re kidding, right?” I replied sarcastically, “The whole freaking room and probably the entire airport heard you grandpa!” I exclaimed mildly amused by his childish naivety.

“It’s impossible,” he persisted, “I didn’t hear anything!”

“Grandpa, if you’re deaf, the rest of the planet - I included - isn’t!” I informed him very much trying to knock some sense into him.

I upped the volume of my voice another couple of decibels and then said: “Now please promise me not to pull any stunt like this once we’re on the plane – we’re in business class so I beg you to behave, do you understand?” He nodded his head, which I took to mean YES. Clearly seeing how the rest of our trip enfolded, it was just a compliance tactic designed to shut me up.

Long story short, my grandpa is evidently in a full swing retrograding cycle, but my grandpa, at the top of his 90 years of age, is still pretty badass!  And in spite of his harmlessly absurd shenanigans I continuously retain a soft spot for him. As far as I’m concerned, ironically, the day he’ll cease to publicly ridicule and embarrass my stuck-up adult booty is the day, I know, he’ll have stopped caring about me. And that will be the real non-comical tragedy.

I’m happy to report that after the 24 hours or so had elapsed, we made it safe and sound to our port of destination, namely the French Riviera.

Of course, being out of luck, now I’m dealing with another set of “male aging badly” problems, which I shall call “my stepdad.” A devastatingly HUGELY obese (I know that an oxymoron but there are no other words to describe the enormity of his body mass) man, he has in a rather spectacular inhuman fashion managed to make Shamu look alarmingly anorexic in comparison.  At almost fifty years old, my dear beloved (NOT!) stepdad is dramatically inflicted with another kind of “sound-system” bodily malfunction known as snoring. And clearly we are being miserably punished for it because while he can’t hear himself, we, on the other hand, absolutely can.

And by “we,” I mean grandpa too!

Thank god my days in not so nice in Nice are numbered. All this unabashed masculine jocularity is a real pain in the ass … or else I’m just having a brain fart?

When is the director going to call "CUT"?