DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

My wife uses the occasion of travel to nurture a latent addiction to logic puzzles. Apparently, figuring out whether Chet sits across from the person who ordered french fries, and whether Arnold paid less than the person in the red shirt, is an excellent way to occupy one’s mind while cooped up on an airplane for twelve hours.

So we’re sitting there on the airplane. My wife has immersed herself a page of clues (with critical facts circled and underlined) and scribbled grids and cross-marks, and I am deep into #3 of the four page-turners I’ve stowed in my carry-on. My subconscious mind processes the various sounds of 200 people pursuing 200 varieties of in-flight entertainment: Game Boys bleat, children fidget, vectors of infectious disease perform grotesque rituals of personal hygiene. Through this, a stewardess happens down the aisle. She stops, briefly contemplates my wife’s mad pursuit of the seating order, shirt size, and dessert choice of five people whose names invariably begin with A, B, C, D, and E, and asks: “Is that the MENSES test?”

As a person who travels with some frequency, I’ve come to admire the peculiar behaviors of stewardesses. I have no doubt that the thin air and overexposure to solar radiation have affected the neural density, if not the DNA, of the people who spend most of their waking hours in the stratosphere. And although I do not believe that this exposure has turned the brains of all airborn courtesy personnel to jelly, it should suffice to say that one of the prerequisites for joining MENSA is the ability to pronounce its name.