Jew World Order

The facts are these: on Friday evening, a Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Barcelona was forced to turn back around and land because a passenger had diarrhoea. The flight landed a little over two hours after taking off, which is about 25 percent of the scheduled 8+ hour flight, and by all accounts that was because there was a big streak of diarrhoea down one of the aisles. When you do diarrhoea in a contained air supply like that, it is considered a “biohazard”, so that’s why they had to turn it around. These are the facts.

One additional fact: there is nothing the human condition loves more than the knowledge that someone did a shit on a plane in such a way that it landed that plane. It is juvenile, yes, but air travel is such a highwire of logistics and airport stress and time and money and crushed legs, and if you’re not the one on the flight, it’s just— it’s just really funny that it’s possible to shit a plane out of the sky. 

What appeals to me, though, is the texture of someone doing a shit in a plane so badly the plane had to turn back around and land again. There is a comedy of manners at play, here: the diarrhoea-haver, the diarrhoea-smellers and witnesses, the air steward or stewardess who had to tell the pilot, in a very quiet serious voice, that someone did diarrhoea.

“In the toilet?” the pilot says, pressing their many knobs and buttons, and they are told: “No. Elsewhere.” 

“Well, where, then?”

“All up and down one of the aisles.”

“Like a dog?”

“Like a dog.”

“What kind of colour of brown is it?”

“The diarrhoea?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d say a sort of meaty terracotta, sir. It’s definitely a brown-leaning red.”

“Call Atlanta and tell them to clear the runway. We’re coming home, fast.”

Here are just five of the questions I have, off dome, about the plane diarrhoea, but I do have many more:

1. CAN WE TAKE A MOMENT TO CONSIDER THE MENTAL STATE OF THE PERSON WHO DID THE DIARRHOEA?

I am not calling for radical empathy here: the person did diarrhoea down an aisle and slopped it up so badly the plane had to turn around. People’s holidays and connected flights were ruined. They also had to see diarrhoea.

I, like you, am someone who has had diarrhea before in my life – hey, I can admit it – and I know how unideal it is. The sour hot feeling. The bubbling of magma. The sudden lurches, the great cauldron of strain. That said: never in all my diarrhoea-having career have I shot diarrhoea down my pants’ legs and onto the aisle of a plane, because when I have diarrhoea, I have the good goddamn sense to make sure my anus is almost always within five steps of a bathroom.

This, I suppose, is my main problem with the diarrhoea person on the Atlanta–Barcelona flight: they know they had diarrhoea. Diarrhoea is not a sudden problem. They were sitting in their chair thinking: uh oh. They were thinking: feeling kind of diarrhoea-y, down there. If you’ve ever been in the window seat of a plane and needed the bathroom, you know that those 20 or so minutes before you finally muster up the courage to say to your seatmates “excuse me, could I just—” feels like hours.

You’re not really watching that Fast & Furious film in front of you. You are thinking, on a loop: ‘I need the bathroom. Well, do I need the bathroom? I do sort of need a piss. But how much do I need a piss? I need it maybe: 40 percent. I maybe 40 percent need a piss. And once I have one piss, on the flight, I’ll subsequently need other pisses. That’s how pisses work. I suppose if I get up I could brush my teeth at the same time – really make the most of the bathroom visit – but then I’d have to open the luggage haul up there and rootle through my bag for my toothbrush. Is that OK? I think it’s OK. I feel like I 70 percent need a piss now. Now I can get up. Just take my headphones off… wait for eye contacts… and—.’

This is not a thing you can do when you have diarrhoea. You just kind of need to move and fire. So I guess my real question is: how long did the person with diarrhoea sit there knowing they had diarrhoea but not going to the bathroom because they were too embarrassed to have to talk to the person next to them because they knew they’d pull a face when they realised they’d have to pause their film and get up?

Or, to put it another way: is the person who had so much diarrhoea they grounded a flight fucking stupid? Do it in a toilet, dipshit!

2. HOW MANY PEOPLE ON THE FLIGHT TOOK A VERY STRONG SLEEPING PILL AND WOKE UP WITH DELIGHT THINKING THEY WERE IN BARCELONA BUT ACTUALLY WERE DISMAYED TO FIND OUT THEY WERE NOT ONLY IN ATLANTA BUT THEY HAD TO TIPTOE ROUND SOME DIARRHOEA?

America has a lot of bad things going for it, but one of its best is its over-the-counter medicine industry, which allows you access to incredibly strong pills with basically zero questions asked. “That’s why there’s an opioid epidemic” – sure, critics might say that. But what I say is: most Americans don’t mind flying on planes, because they are basically unconscious in that deep, dreamless, medical way for most of it. They consider an eight-hour flight a sort of sleepy treat. And then they wake up in Europe, where they love to speak to waiters in too loud voices, and pretend they can’t drink the tap water, for some fucking reason.

So: I am wondering what percentage of that flight got on at Atlanta, nestled into a neck pillow, put on some over-ear sound cancelling headphones (the good Sony ones!), popped a valium and rinsed it down with a beaker of red wine, pulled a sleep mask over their eyes, stepped their feet out of their Skechers and: ahh. Blissless, deep, grey-black sleep. 

You blink awake. Man, that didn’t seem like it took that long. Eight hours? Easy. I can get to my hotel in Barcelona, loll by the pool for a few hours, stretch my legs with a light walk to the beach, get myself some pintxos. It’s been a long year, actually: I’ve not been away properly for ages. I need this break. I need this spell of sun. I need a few days to myself, to recalibrate. I can hear people getting up— the plane must have landed. I’ll just wait a few more long, lazy beats before I get up. Stretch my arms out a bit. God, what bliss it is to live in a future like this! How easy it is to dash over to Europe whenever I want! I should do this more. You know what, maybe next year— smells quite sour in here, doesn’t it? And quite strong. I wonder what—

3. HOW BAD DOES THE DIARRHOEA HAVE TO BE TO TURN THE FLIGHT AROUND, WHO ASSESSES THE SEVERITY OF THE DIARRHOEA, AND DO THEY HAVE A CODEWORD FOR THE DIARRHOEA?

The thing with diarrhoea is it must happen on planes all the time: it’s diarrhoea, come on. And I’ve seen how people eat. Eight out of 10 flights must have diarrhoea on them. But the problem with this diarrhoea is it was squirted in a big skidded-on line down the aisle, which made it a problem. People had to see it and smell it and not slip on it. That was the issue with the diarrhoea.

But who, practically, made the call about the diarrhoea being there, and it being such significant diarrhoea that the plane had to land? Was there an attempt to clean it up? Or was there too much of it? I can see from video footage they tried to cover it with paper towels: that’s not really very smart, is it? Because the main issue I find with diarrhoea isn’t looking at it – though I don’t love that. It’s smelling it. It’s being aware that diarrhoea particles are in the air. Did no one at least try to scoop it up? Did they not at least make the diarrhoea-haver try to get some of it up off the carpet (some may view this as punitive, and something close to evil to make a clearly sick person do in their time of need, but my counter to that is: they did diarrhoea everywhere)? And how does the conversation with flight control go? “Flight control, permission to land, we got a— a, uhh… well we. We got a Code Brown. We got a Code Wet & Brown. And a bit Red. Permission to land please.”

A SUB-QUESTION BUT: HOW MANY PEOPLE ON THE FLIGHT REALLY DRAMATICALLY DRY-HEAVED WHEN THEY SAW THE DIARRHEA?
Dramatic people are everywhere. They are everywhere. Tedious dramatic people are everywhere. Someone doing a big old slop of diarrhoea in a plane is a dramatic incident, yes, but I know for a fact mutliple people on that plane were making it worse by pretending it was making them really, really upset and sick. They were leaning over their seats and retching without puking. They were making themselves cry and fanning their tears with their hands. I know this for a fact. They were saying “diarrHOEA!” in a really loud, unsubtle whisper. I know this for a fact. I just want to know how many of them there were. 

4. HOW POLITE DO YOU THINK YOU’D BE IF YOU VISIBLY SAW SOMEONE DO DIARRHOEA ON YOUR PLANE, LIKE IT SHOT OUT OF THEM RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU?

Thinking about this a lot. Day-to-day, I am a fairly polite person. Not fully polite, very capable of being rude, but like: more or less, I am polite. I am imagining the scenario: I am in the aisle seat. I am watching ‘M3GAN’. I bought a sandwich from the airport (I don’t like eating hot meals on planes) and I am about to tuck into it.

I am, given the fact I’m squashed into an aeroplane seat, about as comfortable as I’m going to get. Maybe, in a minute, I’ll ask for a gin and tonic. Maybe in a while I’ll try to sleep. But hold on, commotion— someone is rushing past me with a wobbly gait and people are gasping and holding their breaths. People are standing, and shouting impulsive useless things – “Oh no!”, “Get help!” – and such. I pause M3GAN. I turn around. A person with explosive diarrhoea pushes past me and a little bit of their diarrhoea gets on the cuff of my jogging bottoms. I actively feel the recoil from the diarrhoea splash. There is a big long red-brown skid of diarrhoea from one end of the plane to the other, pooling most particularly by me.

I do not want this egg sandwich anymore. I no longer want to go to Barcelona. But most importantly: all of the attention and care is now on the person with diarrhoea. All of the air stewards are talking to them. Hello, can I get a napkin please? Can I get a hot wet towel? I have someone else’s diarrhoea on me. But no one cares, no one cares. In this scenario: how polite are you being? 

5. DO YOU THINK THE DIARRHOEA PERSON STOOD AT THE FRONT OF THE PLANE AND APOLOGISED TO EVERYONE, OR DO YOU THINK THEY HID IN THE TOILET CUBICLE SOBBING?

Here’s my thing: if I had diarrhoea so bad I ruined 250 people’s holidays, I think I’d want to give some sort of shrug and a “hey, sorry about that”. An explanation, at least (“I reheated a burrito this morning. I don’t know what I was thinking.”). Offer to buy them all a drink at the airport bar. But then also, you must weigh up the sheer humiliation of doing that, and also the fact that it only takes one person with a camera phone and a mild-to-medium TikTok following to record your face and upload it with the caption “this is the motherfucker who did diarrhoea!” and then, well. Your life may as well be over.

Perhaps, then, I’d hide in the cubicle – sobbing! Weeping! – and then email the airway afterwards. See if I can get a manifest and write to or email everyone and send them a Starbucks giftcard. It won’t fully erase the diarrhoea smears from their memory, but it will at least help. I think that’s what I’d do. I don’t think the diarrhoea person did that, afterwards. I feel like they’ve had a really hard weekend, thinking constantly about all that diarrhoea they did. Probably they’ll be thinking about that diarrhoea for the rest of their life. 

Well, those are my questions for now. Until this inevitably happens again: see ya.

@joelgolby 

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