What's Upstairs

I got in from Nairobi and reached Gate F5 in Schiphol Airport a bit earlier than usual for my next flight from Amsterdam. Went through the X-ray machines and handed my passport and boarding pass to a young KLM lady behind the counter. She scanned me in and I saw red text blinking on her screen: “SEAT CHANGE * SEAT CHANGE’’ and number 75J pop up. Whereas I had previously carefully selected seat 11C, an aisle seat in Economy Comfort toward the front of the plane, for the long leg to the U.S.

I hope you’re not changing my seat, because I reserved an aisle…..

Yes sir. You have been upgraded to Business Class.

Gulp. I admit, as much as I travel, until that moment I didn’t really know what Business Class was. Certainly I had HEARD of Business Class. I knew they didn’t ordinarily let people like me sit in Business Class. I don’t own a briefcase. I never took Accounting. Sudoku scares me, and I don’t have an iPhone. All I knew was this: the Business Class people always go first on the plane, I think even before people in wheelchairs and moms with babies, and then you don’t see them again, ever, and that when they walk by the rest of us sweaty impatient Economy people massed near the door, we hush down and step aside, and they walk coolly past on their cells, selling off chip-maker stocks and smelling of expensive lotion while we stare and wonder how they came by so much money.

I didn’t want to appear over-anxious, yet was the first passenger on the plane. I could feel the lowerclasses staring and wondering at me as I boarded. They think I am an American Internet wizard, that’s why my face is unshaven and my clothes are cheap….they likely think I am friends with Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps they think I am an actor – several people have said I resemble Rick Moranis. I feel sorry for them. They will not be on the plane first and they will be so cramped, poor things. Umm....

Imagine my surprise when the flight attendant, instead of pointing left or right, pointed up the stairs. Business Class as a metaphor for heaven? WOW. Never have I been upstairs on a plane.

At the top of the stairs I turned left, and beheld a scene of great comfort. The seats were as large as Aunt Joanne’s and Uncle Reggie’s La-Z-Boys back in West Virginia – possibly larger. Grey wrinkly soft leather, or it could have been really nice fake leather that was just as comfortable as leather. Real arm rests, roomy and flat, with space for two or three cocktails at once – no elbow fights up here. The seats all had something that looked like levers sticking out of them on their right sides, at about head-height. I wasn’t sure but guessed they had something to do with turning the seats into beds. It smelled comfortable, too. Maybe they filter the air, or just do a better job cleaning the bathrooms, but there was not the usual stuffy urine-tinged-and-many-other-nervous-people plane smell that is common among the commoners – I mean, in Economy. Hey CHECK OUT THE HEADPHONES! After figuring out I didn’t have to pay for them, (they looked like you should have to pay for them), I sat down in my cavernous aisle seat and tried to reach them, new-looking and packed in plastic in the back of the seat in front of me. I had to get up, though, because the magazine holder in front of me was so far away. Is there such a thing as too much legroom?

I began experimenting with the lever sticking out of the seat by my temple. I yanked it up – nothing. Yanked it down – nada. Tried rotating it gently in clockwise and counter-clockwise motions. Maybe it was broken – nothing I tried with the lever would turn my seat into a bed. After puzzling over it for several minutes, I realized it was a reading lamp. So I turned it on and pretended I knew what it was all along, as I explored the 10-button electronic seat massage system.

They give gifts, too, in Business Class. First I got a spiffy black pouch filled with toiletries including a tiny tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, as well as warm soft socks and a silky sleeping mask. But the coup de grace was the tiny Delft ceramic Dutch rowhouse replica, about the size of a saltshaker, containing a shot or two of expensive Dutch gin. When the stewardess came by with it, I had no idea what was happening. She looked at me, and I looked at her, so she positioned her tray a little closer to me, expectantly. I picked up the small house, looked at it, and put it back on the tray.

It’s very nice, I said.

She waited.

Is it...for me? I asked.

Yes. It is a gift.

What is it?

It is very good Dutch gin in a tiny Dutch house. You can collect them.

Of course. My kids will love it. Thank you.