Dick’s Guide to Thanksgiving Travel

Who's ready to make nice on the airplane?

MEMORANDUM

To: People Traveling for Thanksgiving

From: Dick

Re: Whether You Should Fly or Drive

Based on my four and a half hours of research yesterday, conducted within the airspace of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, I have the following recommendations to folks on whether you should be flying or driving to your Thanksgiving destination:

1. If you are raging drunk at the start of the trip (aka “comin’ in hot”), you should fly. Drunk driving is still illegal in most states. (I think it’s just frowned upon in the Dakotas). 

 

2. If you want to spend the first few minutes of your trip having an obnoxious conversation on your cell phone with somebody answering to the name “Daddy”, who is clearly not your daddy based on the subject matter of the conversation, then you should fly. It’s illegal to use a cell phone while driving in many states.

 

3. If you reek of cigarettes and/or weed, then you should fly. You’ll never get that smell out of your car.

 

4. If you tend to speak in volumes completely inappropriate for cramped spaces, then you should fly. There’s more space in an airplane’s cabin than in your Ford Focus.

 

5. If you have a fear of being alone, which you often remedy by engaging multiple unwilling partners in totally inane conversations where you swear loudly and repeat observations ad naseum (i.e., “you look like Peyton Manning! I can’t believe how much you look like Peyton Manning! (turning to other passengers within earshot (i.e., everyone on the fucking plane) Doesn’t he look like Peyton Manning!?”), then you should fly. Airplanes provide captive audiences.

 

6. If you expect that, 20 minutes into your trip, you will be ordering tequila shots, then you should fly. Though no public airline actually serves tequila, your order suggests that you really need alcohol, and the airline will have some acceptable substitues on hand. Also, see #1 above.

 

7. If you can’t go 90 seconds without thinking about or mentioning aloud how you “need a cigarette so fucking bad,” then you should fly. You’ll never overcome your addiction if you keep driving places.

 

8. If you like to have long-winded conversations about weed to take your mind off the trip, then you should fly. There’s more likely to be someone that finds your repeated mention of “dubage” as hilarious as you do.

 

9. If you have a train-wreck of a tattoo on your left breast, which tends to fall out of your shirt being that it’s usually unencumbered by a bra, then you should fly. Otherwise, there’ll be nobody who accidently sees it and throws up in his mouth a little.

 

10. If you are completely terrified of flying, and handle it by downing 7 airplane bottles of vodka and cycling through outbursts of crying and/or swearing in situations that don’t call for it, then you should fly. It’s going to be difficult to find a local liquor store that has those airplane bottles.

 

11. If you like to refer to flight attendants as “fucker,” “fa**ot,” and/or “fairy,” after they very politely decline to serve you an 8th bottle of vodka, then you should fly. There won’t be any flight attendants in your car.

 

12. If, during travel, you like to grasp the hands of two complete strangers (with interlocked fingers) as hard as you can, occasionally pulling said hands into your previously mentioned breast, then you should fly. Unfortunately, you’ll need at least one free hand if you’re driving.

 

13. If, as you near your destination, you like to announce your thoughts on the perils of landing, horce-race-announcer style, along with the obligatory “I need off this fucking plane right now!” statement, then you should fly. That stuff just won’t make sense if you’re in a car.

 

14. If your insatiable need for nicotine requires that you be the first one off the plane, which manifests itself in the form of you springing up with a quickness that belies your perceived level of fitness and you barreling over and through other passengers, stopping to tell a very pleasant gentleman that is wholly unfamiliar with this procedure to “stop being being a dick!”, you should fly. The “de-planing” process from a car just isn’t as involved.

 

These suggestions are just that — suggestions — but are based on the very real consequences of Dick’s uninformed decision to to fly home for Thanksgiving. I suggest you think twice before doing so yourself. Happy Turkey Day Eve Eve Eve.

-Dick