Vegetarian chicken
Waking up in the morning, there’s always something wandering about in my head. Usually it’s a line from a song. But frequently it’s a line from the flight safety video on board. While I gently return to the bright new world, a voice in my head might tell me: “Put the back of your seat in the upright position and stow your tray table.” There’s only one way to make sure these wake-up phrases don’t haunt me all day: play a good song and sing along out loud.
The song lyrics I wake up with are a mystery to me, since they’re always from songs I greatly dislike. I do understand the lines from the flight safety video, though. I must have heard them a thousand times at least. Obviously they’ll show up at unexpected moments, won’t they?
Once in a while I catch myself saying phrases that aren’t applicable to a situation at all. Like on my last flight. While the passengers were disembarking I only realised I was saying “welcome on board” after a lady smiled at me and replied: “Well thank you, but I’m rather happy to leave your plane after all those hours, if you don’t mind.”
On another occasion I brought about hilarity during the meal service. The first few passengers I asked, didn’t even seem to notice, but a young boy started to laugh out loud when I asked him: “Would you like vegetarian chicken or pasta?” Of course, he kept pulling my leg for the remainder of the flight. Like whether the turkey in the salad and the sausage with the omelette were vegetarian as well.
I guess it would be too easy to blame these slips of the tongue to fatigue. In our job there are several things that we repeat numerous times. The constant repetition of certain phrases must put me on autopilot. Which is very handy when it comes to flight safety: we’re all drilled on taking the right actions should an emergency occur. But in a normal situation, when attention slips for a moment, ‘bits’ might jump into my head now and then.
Am I the only one ‘suffering’ from phrases wandering about in my head, I wonder? Or will a mother wake up, hearing herself shout: “don’t touch that, darling!”? And what about the train conductor, will he hear: “the next train will leave from platform 2”? Not to mention the market vendor, selling “beautiful strawberries, 2 euros only!”.
Caroline
