Diet Coke is a very Zen thing…

I should clarify the title above… actually, pouring Diet Coke is a very Zen thing.  Here’s the deal: I serve beverages every working day, both carbonated and uncarbonated.  Every other carbonated beverage, you pour it, you hand it off to the passenger, and you go on to the next thing.  With Diet Coke, on the other hand, you wait for the foam to subside and you pour a little more.  And then you wait a little more and you pour a little more…

Oh, I didn’t give in to it quietly.  I tried everything I could think of… putting the soda into the plastic cup and then adding the ice, which diminished the foam, but made a godawful mess with the splashiness, you know.  Tried tilting the cup and pouring it in slowly, which didn’t work.  Tried everything.  Might sound like a silly preoccupation, but seconds count when you’re trying to serve 50 people in 40 minutes of flight…

But now, I’ve decided it’s one of the many things I’m here to learn, a little patience maybe, or just living in the moment, or just letting the seconds count themselves, I’m not really sure.  So I watch the foam subside.  First the bigger bubbles, then the smaller ones, all happily departing with a murmur you can only hear if you listen very closely, which is hard to do with all the ambient noise in the plane.  And people get all bent out of shape when I put my ear in their drink.   

So I watch.  And I wait.  And I pour a little more.  And I do it again.  I have to watch the soda, because as a flight attendant, passengers watch you all the time.  You are the floor show.  If I’m looking around instead of at the soda, and I catch them watching me, some universal nonverbal ettiquette demands they immediately look away.  Unless I smile, and then they can smile back.  And bluntly, my teeth get dry with all the smiling…so I watch the Diet Coke bubble and toil away mightily, and I wait, and I pour some more soda in the cup. 

I finally hand it to the passenger in 15A, kick my balky beverage cart into movement, push it three steps, set its brakes once more, and ask the passenger in 16A if I can get them something. 

“Do you have Diet Coke?” She asks with a hopeful note in her voice, and a half smile. 

“I sure do,” I tell her, and I flick open another can of Diet Coke, scoop a little ice into the plastic cup, and I pour.  And I wait.  It’s a Zen thing.