NWA: the Original Gangsters

Northwest Airlines does operate flights to Europe, but they operate out of the seventies, so the standards are not that high. Two aisles of seats, a piece of chicken, and one showing of Daddy Day Camp. After Daddy Day Camp, if you are so lucky, a large Dutch man will drop a red backpack on your face. I was so lucky. I was not so lucky as to have him apologize. Because that is how NWA rolls.

I did sit next to an old German man named Maximilian, but whom I called Maxamillions. Maxamillions had hands that looks like old trees. He also had some stories. He told me that once he flew over the Atlantic in a zeppelin. But I think he was a liar; not because of the zeppelin, but because he told me he used to be a prisoner of Austrailia when it was still a penal colony. That makes no sense, chronologically.

Maxamillions did tell me he was from Dresden, which was a major location in Slaughterhouse-Five. I asked him if he ever read Vonnegut, and he said no, which is sad, because Vonnegut is the best thing to ever happen to science fiction (and since science fiction is the best thing to ever happen to language itself, concordently...). I asked him how Dresden was today, and Maxamillions said it was beautiful. Then I asked him how it was growing up in Germany, as it was, and he told me this story:

When we were kids, we were so poor that for Christmas our parents gave us boys pants with holes in the pockets, so we would have something to play with.

And then he laughed all the way to Amsterdam.