Ann Hood, FLY GIRL: A Memoir
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
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[0:53]And Hood is the author of Fly Girl, a memoir.
[1:00]And is the best-selling author of the novels The Knitting Circle, the obituary writer, and the book that matters most.
[1:05]And the memoirs, kitchen yarns, notes on life, love, and food, and comfort, a journey through Greek grief,
[1:11]which was named one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly.
[1:15]Her new memoir, Fly Girl, is about her years as a TWA flight attendant during the late 70s and mid 80s.
[1:21]Welcome and thank you so much for coming on moms don't have time to read books.
[1:25]Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[1:28]Oh, I really, really enjoyed your book as just telling you, I read every word.
[1:33]I could not get enough of not only your experience being a flight attendant, but it's almost your whole coming of age and how you got to where you were and how you started with your teacher telling him
[1:46]him or your college advisor saying like, well, I want to be a writer and him being like, we can't do that to know where not only are you a wonderful author, but have also written this beautiful memoir about your whole experience getting here.
[1:58]So, so anyway, I loved it.
[2:00]Thank you. You know, you're exactly right. It took me so long to write this book.
[2:04]And that's because I had to figure out that it was a coming of age story.
[2:08]People would always say when I tell some some anecdote, you know about what happened on the plane, my, my famous line, when I was a flight attendant and then, you know, and they think you should write about that.
[2:18]You should write a book about that. I would take that would just be a series of story like anecdotes, it wouldn't be that interesting.
[2:24]But when I realized, wait a minute, it's my coming of age story.
[2:28]The writer in me could do that. You know, I was like, oh, I get it. Now I know how to write about this.
[2:34]Interesting. Well, maybe give a little more context for people listening since I just jumped right in about the trajectory of the story.
[2:44]Why you decided to write this memoir now.
[2:47]So, well, I wanted to be a writer from the time I read Little Women. I was like in second or third grade. And I think it's the cursive every female writer that Joe March ruined us for life.
[2:59]But I also had this great desire to leave my little hometown in Rhode Island and see the world.
[3:07]My father was a career Navy man. And my bedtime stories were him telling me about all the exotic places he traveled to and all the things he'd done, you know, he went skiing in Greece and he ate all the strange food in Morocco.
[3:22]And he just had incredible stories and he really fueled my wanderlust.
[3:26]So, at a young age, I thought, well, I don't have a lot to write about. I live in the small town. I live a pretty quiet life.
[3:33]But if I became back then an airline stewardess, I would have adventures and that would fuel my writing desire.
[3:41]But my junior high guidance counselor next both those ideas. He said people don't become writers and smart girls don't become airline stewardesses.
[3:51]But I had read a book called kind of become an airline stewardess. And the first line in that book was, would you like a boyfriend in every city in the world.
[4:01]That kind of capped it for me. I'd already had the wanderlust thing go. I'm a mute for adventure to so I could become a writer and then I could have a bunch of boyfriends. I was like, I am ready.
[4:10]So I interviewed in 1977. They had only recently become flight attendants. And that's because men won the right to have the job.
[4:19]So that's why the term airline stewardess actually stopped.
[4:22]1977 they had just stopped the requirement that you had to quit if you had a child.
[4:30]And just 10 years earlier they had stopped the requirement that you had to quit if you got married.
[4:35]15 years earlier they stopped the requirement that you had to quit when you turned 32.
[4:40]Because as TWA said if a man doesn't want her, we don't either.
[4:45]Oh my gosh.
[4:47]So I stepped eyes wide open into this sexist job.
[4:51]And didn't you also say it wasn't until 1991 when they stopped weighing you in?
[4:56]Yes, weigh ins. The weight restriction was what the airlines held on to the longest.
[5:02]And I think maybe not like maybe I know that it's because flight attendants were a free marketing tools for airlines.
[5:09]You know, the way they had dress, the way the ads were. I mean, you know, they said things like, Oh, we'll shake our tails for you and they'd have like a sexy flight attendant like bent over.
[5:21]But it was a strange time to start because yes, all this was there, the sexism, the weigh ins, all of it.
[5:28]But, you know, feminism was happening.
[5:31]And so we kind of had one foot in one world and one foot in the other. So it was a very interesting time to have the job.
[5:37]I do have to say, as you know from the book, my darling roommate was fired for being five pounds overweight.
[5:44]You got three chances to lose that weight.
[5:48]And I have to say, we were all pretty thin, you know, women, young women.
[5:54]And once you were one pound over, you were put on like a watch.
[5:58]And then you'd get these surprise weigh ins.
[6:00]And I came home from a flight one day and she was crying bags packed going back home.
[6:06]So sad.
[6:07]I mentioned that it wasn't even fair because a lot of you dieted and so much just to get the job.
[6:13]So it's not like that was your natural set point anyway.
[6:16]Exactly. So when you applied.
[6:18]Yeah, I really wonder what they do about this now because you're not supposed to do ways.
[6:22]I'm kind of going to do a fake application to buy that.
[6:25]You've got a chart and it had heights.
[6:28]And next to the height was the maximum weight you could weigh to even get an interview.
[6:34]Everybody wanted to be skinnier than that. So you would kind of die it or, you know, starve yourself for a few days just to drop a couple pounds.
[6:41]But then you were hired at that weight.
[6:43]So you couldn't go back up to that weight that was on that chart.
[6:46]You had to stay at your hiring weight.
[6:48]And that's really what did my roommate in shit gotten down to about 10 pounds less than that weight.
[6:54]But you had to stay at that unfair unfair. I know, but it's gone finally.
[7:00]I did not even realize, and this was just sort of setting the stage for your particular story.
[7:05]But you did give the reader a lot of information about even how stewardesses became to be back when you were working there, which I had no idea about.
[7:13]And I don't know if like the other the lay people out there also know that really they started as nurses.
[7:19]And it was it was a marketing campaign to say like men were so afraid to fly.
[7:24]But if you had a woman up there, they would have to say, he would have to say, well, if women are up there, I can't be seen being too afraid to do this.
[7:33]I love that story. I love this woman is one of my heroes. Ellen church was a nurse, but she had a pilot's license. This is back in the early 30s.
[7:41]And she knew that aviation was the future. Like she figured it out like this is going to work.
[7:47]So she applied as a pilot to what would become United Airlines was called Western at the time.
[7:52]And they like laughed right of the office, but she was determined to work out those airplanes. So she came up with the idea that hey, people are afraid to fly.
[8:00]Men will feel better if a nurse they were nurses uniforms right if a nurse is there taking care of him, giving him the air sick bag, which was their biggest job because they flew kind of low at the beginning so it was very fun.
[8:14]And so she hired set when she got approval child seven of her nursing friends and the eight of them have been, I mean they've been memorialized in so many ways.
[8:24]So many pictures of them in their nurses uniforms.
[8:27]And it was really World War two that changed it because nurses were called into the war effort.
[8:32]And then all these young women were like, that's a fun job. You get to go everywhere.
[8:38]So they flocked to airlines in a smart marketing executive way back in the 40s were like, wait, let's take the pretty ones.
[8:47]And then that it began that it began.
[8:50]Oh my gosh.
[8:51]Well, you started by by saying that one of the draws was having a boyfriend in every port so to speak. And you, you did write about some of your relationships, even not so in depth, but enough to peak everybody's interest.
[9:04]And I have to say, I was really rooting for you to end up with the boggle guy. Could you talk about him a little bit.
[9:11]I know that was a big disappointment.
[9:14]I mean in the novel version, you could end up with the boggle guy.
[9:18]Exactly. I have to fictionalize this so we can turn it out differently.
[9:21]So I was working this great flight. It was my favorite flight that I think I ever worked my parents. We left Boston at like dinner time.
[9:29]And we flew to Newark.
[9:31]I people think I'm crazy for loving this because it was so much up and down and it was in the middle of the night, but we flew to Newark from Newark to LA.
[9:39]And on that flight, we did the big fancy coast to coast service.
[9:43]And I always say people are shocked. I was just telling someone this the other day in coach.
[9:49]You got a menu and a choice of three entrees that there was an appetizer service in a after dinner drink service with like those little bottles of amoretto.
[10:00]and drag buoy and stuff.
[10:02]And it was a big fancy service.
[10:03]Never mind what they were doing first class,
[10:05]which was, you know, even more.
[10:07]But it was a big fancy service that I loved doing.
[10:09]And then from LA, you went to San Francisco
[10:12]in the middle of the night.
[10:13]You know, I think we got to San Francisco
[10:15]to about five in the morning.
[10:17]Very few people were on it for that whole thing.
[10:19]It was like typically because why would you fly so many stops?
[10:23]But there was a couple or so I thought
[10:26]sitting in the front of the cabin.
[10:28]I was working in and they got on in Boston
[10:30]and they were with us the whole way to San Francisco.
[10:33]But on that long Newark LA flight,
[10:36]after we set everybody and put the lights out
[10:38]and people were going to sleep,
[10:40]there was this really obnoxious noise.
[10:42]Trim, chim, chim, chim, chim, chim, chim, chim.
[10:45]People are trying to sleep.
[10:46]Some guy says, can you go stop them?
[10:48]What's going on up there?
[10:50]And I said, yeah, it is annoying.
[10:52]I will go check, sir.
[10:53]And so I went up and I looked
[10:55]and this man and woman who had gotten on in Boston
[10:58]were playing the game boggles.
[10:59]So if people don't know what boggles,
[11:01]it's one of the most fun word games.
[11:02]I love it.
[11:03]I loved it, right?
[11:04]A bunch of letters in a plastic kind of container.
[11:08]And you shake it quite a bit and then dropped it down,
[11:12]pulled off the top and the letters,
[11:13]you had to make words out of letters that had fallen.
[11:16]And so instead of stopping them,
[11:18]I was like very intrigued and I said, what are you doing?
[11:21]And the guy says what we're playing boggle
[11:23]and he explained how work he said, do you want to play?
[11:25]So I actually became the contributor of the noise.
[11:28]But I sat down and I played a lot of games,
[11:31]but the woman kept giving me the stink eye.
[11:33]And I thought, this is kind of weird as it is,
[11:35]a friend, and I have to say that I sound very shallow,
[11:40]but I have to say the lights are very dim
[11:42]on those late night slides.
[11:43]And he looked fine and nice and sweet in a boggle player.
[11:49]Anyway, I had to get back to work,
[11:50]but he asked me out and I was so excited
[11:52]because as I say in the book,
[11:55]my roommates always were getting dates with passengers
[11:57]and I just never was.
[11:58]I don't know what it was about me,
[12:00]but I just did not get asked out that much.
[12:03]And I was so excited, I finally got a date from a passenger.
[12:06]And he shows up at my apartment in Boston.
[12:10]I hear the elevator ding and I open.
[12:13]And let's just say I could tell immediately
[12:14]he was not my type.
[12:16]Okay, he's got this wrapped box and he shakes it.
[12:22]Oh, okay.
[12:23]I still have that very boggle game.
[12:24]No, no, I go game.
[12:26]Yes, I still have it.
[12:28]But I just knew it was maybe one of the worst states ever.
[12:32]We played a couple games of boggle to break in the thing.
[12:34]We went to dinner, but alas,
[12:36]the boggle man was not for me.
[12:38]Oh, well, I love how you woven stories like that.
[12:43]But then you also go really deep into emotion and feeling,
[12:47]not only did you have this horrific experience
[12:49]where a passenger basically died in your arms
[12:52]with like vomiting and your mouth.
[12:54]Oh my gosh, I can't believe you and through that.
[12:56]And also even where you are the beacon of comfort
[13:02]for people going through the most horrific things.
[13:04]Like when one passenger had recently lost a sibling
[13:07]and you were the one standing there trying to get them through it.
[13:10]And then you fast forward again to what happens
[13:12]in your own life, which I don't know if you're willing
[13:14]to talk about or not, and then the tables have turned
[13:17]and now you are being comforted by,
[13:19]it was like, I got goosebumps at the whole thing.
[13:21]I was like, oh my gosh, it's like the universe
[13:23]or giving this back to you in a way.
[13:26]Well, you know, you're in this like metal tube
[13:30]and I flew international and coast to coast flights.
[13:32]Mostly I'm in it.
[13:33]I did my share of the little short hops.
[13:35]But and you're there with passengers for hours and hours.
[13:39]Life unfolds on airplanes, you know, things happen.
[13:41]I saw people fall in love.
[13:43]I saw people try to save relationships.
[13:46]I saw people fight.
[13:47]I saw people on their honeymoon.
[13:49]I mean, you know, you just see people going about their lives
[13:53]and the airplane is moving them to their next place.
[13:56]And I was always so aware of that
[13:58]and it's such an appreciation of that.
[14:00]One of my favorite things to do was kind of sit
[14:01]on the jump seat and watch, you know,
[14:04]just watch what people were up to.
[14:06]The man dying on my flight was to still for me
[14:10]one of the worst experiences I've ever had
[14:12]because he came on and this was on a short flight.
[14:16]It was from Pittsburgh to St. Louis.
[14:18]And he was dressed so dapper and kind of old fashioned.
[14:21]I mean, it was like 1980, but he had the door on.
[14:24]And he kind of looks like my dad.
[14:26]And I think that that made me notice him more or something.
[14:30]But I did notice he was very out of breath and kind of flushed.
[14:34]And but people used to run to planes.
[14:36]You could get on at the 11th hour.
[14:37]You know, it wasn't like now.
[14:39]And gay agents would say run like hell,
[14:41]you'll make the plane and you know, they've run on.
[14:44]So it didn't really strike me as that unusual,
[14:46]but right on takeoff, something happened.
[14:49]He was sitting very close to my jump seat.
[14:51]And the man in his row said,
[14:52]help something's going on and we jumped up.
[14:55]And we were taught that you can't stop giving CPR
[14:59]until a professional arrives.
[15:01]Had there been a doctor on the plane,
[15:03]we could have stopped, but there wasn't.
[15:05]So we had to wait until we landed and the EMTs got on.
[15:09]And that man died way before that,
[15:10]like maybe an hour before 45 minutes before.
[15:14]So even though it was very clear he had died,
[15:16]we had to keep doing it.
[15:17]It was horrible.
[15:19]Oh, and you know, I got hired when I was 21.
[15:23]I was, I was a young person.
[15:26]And that's why I say the job is so empowering
[15:29]because you started at this young age,
[15:31]but you deal with so many situations.
[15:35]And the other one you brought up,
[15:36]I think is really a good example of that.
[15:39]I was just standing, it was an international flight.
[15:41]And I was just standing in the galley.
[15:43]And this guy came in and he was clearly upset.
[15:46]And this was actually kind of common
[15:48]that people would kind of find a flight attendant.
[15:52]It sounds weird to say you're the dark,
[15:54]but you know, again, those dim lights and it's safe
[15:57]and kind of cozy and just spill their light
[16:00]and just spill out whatever was on their mind.
[16:02]I had so many people tell me,
[16:04]I want to leave my husband or you know,
[16:07]I want to quit my job, I want a different life.
[16:10]And I was so young.
[16:11]And what I learned was to listen.
[16:14]And that's what I felt I did with this man
[16:15]who's brother had died.
[16:17]He came in and told me he was drinking whiskey,
[16:20]you know, and I kept him supplied, it's, you know,
[16:23]you needed that.
[16:24]But I just listened and I remember thinking,
[16:28]this is so much bigger than where I am in my life.
[16:32]You know, I had great parents have one brother,
[16:34]big Italian family, and it seems so scary and real,
[16:39]but also kind of distant or like it's what happens out there.
[16:45]And it wasn't that much long later
[16:47]that my own brother died.
[16:49]And I was on a layover in Los Angeles when I got the call
[16:52]and I got the last flight back to Boston.
[16:56]And I was the person in the galley
[16:58]getting comfort from the flight attendant that night.
[17:01]It was so sorry.
[17:03]Did your brother die from something that happened in the bathroom
[17:05]or was that just an example of what could happen?
[17:07]No, he fell in the bathroom
[17:09]when he was filling the bathtub and banged his head.
[17:14]And literally he drowned in like two inches of water.
[17:17]He just fell face first.
[17:20]Yeah, it was, you know, I always say a freak accident,
[17:23]but we were actually told that that's not that uncommon.
[17:25]Like it's more common than being struck by lightning.
[17:28]So it was just one of those things.
[17:31]How do you go through that and then sort of pick yourself
[17:35]back up and go back to what you're doing.
[17:38]That's a great question, Sivi.
[17:39]You know, I really, I didn't actually for a long time.
[17:42]I took a leave because I just, first of all,
[17:46]I felt very responsible for my parents and their grief
[17:49]and making sure they were okay.
[17:52]He died on June 30th.
[17:54]My father's birthday is July 4th.
[17:56]And so it was just this weird time.
[17:59]It was so hot.
[18:00]I remember and I moved back home and I stayed with them.
[18:04]But I have fabulous parents.
[18:06]And in August, and I had been set to move to New York,
[18:10]I transferred from Boston to New York.
[18:12]I've been waiting for so long for that transfer.
[18:15]And I called and took a leave.
[18:17]And that August, my mother said you have to go live your life.
[18:20]Your life isn't to be here taking care of us.
[18:23]And so I moved to New York to a tiny, tiny apartment
[18:28]in Greenwich Village.
[18:29]But I think that great act of generosity
[18:32]is what kind of saved me and put me back on track.
[18:36]I said, I'm ready to come back to work,
[18:38]but there was a little bit of a delay
[18:39]before they could put me back into the system
[18:41]and when they needed me again.
[18:44]So I had a couple months to write my book.
[18:46]I was working on and to get to know the city
[18:50]and to just keep moving through it, you know?
[18:53]I was so sorry that happened to you and your family.
[18:55]I'm so so very sorry.
[18:57]The way you shared so much in the book when it happened,
[19:00]it really felt I was there with you
[19:02]as like a friend watching someone
[19:03]go through something horrific.
[19:05]So anyway, my heart just goes out.
[19:07]I know it was a long time ago,
[19:08]but that never matters anyway.
[19:10]It doesn't matter.
[19:10]Yeah, it doesn't matter.
[19:12]You're writing also, you talk about the development
[19:15]of your writing throughout your career
[19:16]and you have this wonderful scene where you had sold a book
[19:20]and there's this jerk guy basically working.
[19:24]And you said something like, well, I'm an author too.
[19:27]And he's like, you don't look smart enough.
[19:28]You look too dumb to be an author.
[19:31]Oh my gosh, right?
[19:32]I know he gets on.
[19:34]It was a flight to Tucson from New York.
[19:36]How do you remember all these flights?
[19:38]You can barely remember flights that I've been on.
[19:40]Like I'm like, that's amazing.
[19:42]You're memory.
[19:43]Sort of funny is I wonder what I don't remember.
[19:45]I'm sure a lot of fascinating things happen.
[19:47]You don't remember.
[19:49]When I was writing this book before I actually started
[19:52]and it was right before the pandemic.
[19:53]I was trying to get my memories together
[19:55]and I went and visited my roommate.
[19:57]We're still friends.
[19:58]She lives in Santa Barbara.
[20:00]And she didn't remember anything I remember.
[20:02]She remembered a whole bunch of other stuff.
[20:03]So I'm like, that's so interesting.
[20:06]Remember when Cathy fainted from not eating?
[20:08]And I was like, nope.
[20:11]But this guy, this was Tucson.
[20:12]And one of the reasons this sticks with me
[20:14]is when I became a writer, I realized
[20:17]he was on his way to the Tucson Literary Festival.
[20:20]There's a big, because he, I thought Tucson was a random,
[20:23]but he said, I'm on my way to give a talk.
[20:25]But he got on the plane.
[20:27]He sat in first class, and in those days,
[20:30]people flew first class, flew first class all the time.
[20:33]There were frequent flyer miles that someone
[20:35]saved for 10 years to have that one flight or whatever.
[20:38]It's all businessmen and they were pretty savvy flyers.
[20:41]This guy looked like he'd never been on a plane before.
[20:44]He's like, doesn't know how to do the seat belt.
[20:46]He's playing with the light and the flight attendant
[20:49]call button, and he was like a toddler.
[20:53]And I finally had to ask him where he was going.
[20:55]I was so curious about his sense of being in a new place
[21:00]and unfamiliar and kind of cranky.
[21:02]And that's what he told me.
[21:03]He was a writer, and he was going to a literary festival
[21:06]or to give a talk.
[21:07]And I had just sold my book.
[21:09]Like I swear, like weeks earlier.
[21:11]And I said, oh, I'm a writer too.
[21:13]But it was the way he looked me up and down
[21:15]that I'll never forget.
[21:17]Before he said, you looked too dumb to be a writer.
[21:21]I mean, he really thought about it.
[21:22]But he handed on.
[21:23]You looked too dumb.
[21:25]But TWA traded was fabulous.
[21:28]And I wanted to punch him in the nose,
[21:30]but I said, oh, I'm sure what you mean is
[21:32]you don't expect a flight attendant to also be a writer.
[21:36]And he looked at me again.
[21:37]And then he said, no, you looked too dumb to be a writer.
[21:42]But as you know, I did.
[21:43]I'm dying to know, by the way, who this author was, this guy.
[21:46]I know, you never tell.
[21:47]Oh my gosh.
[21:48]Because I don't want to embarrass the guy.
[21:50]And I have to tell you, he was
[21:52]the best selling author at the time,
[21:53]but you probably know when he's heard of him now.
[21:56]You know, he had sad.
[21:57]OK.
[21:58]But I did get my sort of shot in Florida
[22:00]because he showed up in a very long line
[22:04]at a book signing of mine.
[22:06]And I spotted him.
[22:07]I mean, I'll never forget that guy.
[22:09]And I said, I cannot believe that guy.
[22:11]He's here waiting in line for me to sign this book.
[22:14]And when it was his turn, he kind of put his elbows
[22:16]on the tables.
[22:17]I bet you don't remember me.
[22:19]And I said, oh, I will never forget you.
[22:23]And then I signed the book.
[22:24]But there's a PS that isn't in the book.
[22:26]A friend of mine, not that long ago, said, oh, I
[22:29]had dinner with this guy in a couple of dinner.
[22:34]And he said that you were his flight attendant
[22:36]and that you two had such a good time talking on the flight.
[22:40]I was like, she was different memories of that.
[22:43]Isn't that wild?
[22:45]Wow.
[22:46]I think I need your TWA training and discretion.
[22:49]I think everyone could use a little dose of that.
[22:51]It was like moderating our reactions, you know?
[22:54]Take it down.
[22:55]Before you said it, you're right, yeah.
[22:57]A sort of mindfulness.
[22:59]I feel like if that happened today would go viral,
[23:02]there would be a whole thing, right?
[23:04]Yeah.
[23:05]He's lucky.
[23:06]He's lucky.
[23:07]And I just love the image of you sitting on the,
[23:10]what did you call it, what is it called, the jump seat?
[23:13]Jump seat, sitting on you on the jumps seat,
[23:16]writing books and stories that became like fabulous,
[23:21]amazing, impactful story.
[23:23]Like, it's just a wonderful image.
[23:25]I love it.
[23:26]It was really sort of a precious time writing my first book
[23:31]in that way.
[23:32]And I do have to say one thing.
[23:34]I think I put it in the book.
[23:35]I'm pretty sure I did.
[23:36]But that fabulous Ellen Church, the first flight attendant,
[23:39]invented jump seat.
[23:40]You did put that in.
[23:41]Yeah, which I always love every time.
[23:43]I see it differently now that I know that.
[23:45]And she put it there because people couldn't tell the bathroom
[23:48]door from the exit door.
[23:49]And she was going to fall out of the plane.
[23:51]So she always put the, I know that was so brilliant.
[23:54]But it was so lovely, because I was doing something
[23:56]I loved, which is working these flights,
[23:58]talking to people, landing in Madrid or Cairo
[24:02]or somewhere that I, you know, that I'd never been
[24:04]or that I love to be.
[24:06]And I always had this time that was just mine
[24:08]where I could get in my story.
[24:10]Everybody was asleep.
[24:12]There was a few times when I got, you know, a little,
[24:16]I wasn't so happy that they wanted a Coke or something.
[24:18]I'm like, look here, I get that.
[24:20]But for the most part, they stayed put.
[24:23]And I would get, you know, at least an hour or something.
[24:25]And there was that feeling of writing in notebooks by hand.
[24:29]And it like I carried my story with me.
[24:31]And I have very clear memories of being on the liquor cart,
[24:36]you know, serving drinks.
[24:37]And you know, there's two of you, one on each end.
[24:40]And like wheeling it down the aisle
[24:41]and thinking about my book.
[24:43]I just have a really clear memory of doing that.
[24:47]Amazing.
[24:48]It just goes to show like, you cannot take the writer
[24:51]out of some people.
[24:52]You're just bored to write.
[24:53]It's just all like.
[24:54]Yeah.
[24:55]But I, one of the things I hoped was that
[24:57]after reading the book, people might see the person handing
[25:00]them that drink and those stale pretzels,
[25:02]see them a little bit differently.
[25:04]You know, you never know.
[25:06]I mean, I would be with people studying for the LSATs
[25:09]to be lawyers or like real estate, licenses,
[25:12]all sorts of things, but the uniform lead you
[25:15]to believe something different, you know?
[25:16]Well, I think people rely on all sorts of shortcuts
[25:19]and make a million wrong conclusions
[25:21]about basically everybody.
[25:23]I mean, there's no way to know anything
[25:24]about anybody from this and what they're doing in their job.
[25:28]I mean, everybody has such interesting stories.
[25:32]You know, and it's such a shame
[25:34]when people are too busy to even try to dig a little bit
[25:37]into that.
[25:38]Yeah, exactly.
[25:39]Exactly.
[25:40]Right into the stereotype, right?
[25:41]Yeah, exactly.
[25:43]So now that this book is out there, are you working on something
[25:46]else, you're going back to fiction?
[25:48]What's the plan?
[25:49]Yeah, so I have a book, I have to revise it.
[25:52]So it's in that stage, full draft.
[25:54]It's called the Museum of Tears.
[25:57]And I haven't wanted for a while,
[25:59]but I haven't landed on the right street
[26:01]to write a story about someone who has to make a big decision
[26:06]and they don't know if they made the right one.
[26:08]and it affected other people.
[26:10]And it's a man who did that, who's now older
[26:13]and is at the end of his life and wants
[26:15]to find out what happened as a result of what he did.
[26:18]And he hires a young woman, a college dropout,
[26:22]to come help him.
[26:23]And so it's sort of a mystery.
[26:24]He has to uncover what happened as a result of something
[26:28]he did 60 years earlier.
[26:31]Wow.
[26:31]Yeah.
[26:32]It's like the opposite of sliding doors.
[26:35]Exactly.
[26:37]I love that, too.
[26:39]It's like the conveyor belt sidewalk going backwards
[26:42]or something.
[26:43]Exactly.
[26:43]No, that's exciting.
[26:45]Has there been anything that's come out of this process
[26:48]of writing the book that you were particularly delighted
[26:51]to go through emotionally or connecting with others?
[26:55]Or is there some piece of it that you're like,
[26:57]I'm so glad I wrote it because it has
[27:00]been the best book tour and events of my writing life.
[27:05]because flight attendants are coming out in droves.
[27:10]And just so somebody came to one of my events
[27:12]and she was a retired Eastern Airlines flight attendant.
[27:15]So I was invited to their luncheon the other day
[27:19]at this restaurant on the upper east side.
[27:21]And I went and there were like 30 flight attendants
[27:24]and sharing stories.
[27:25]And when you get a bunch of flight attendants in the room,
[27:29]it's really a fun, exciting thing.
[27:31]And it just brought back so much.
[27:33]My favorite thing, I think, is that a TWA flight attendant,
[27:37]slightly older than I, but she had the same uniform I did,
[27:41]came in her uniform and she was sitting in the front row.
[27:45]This was on Cape Cod at a library.
[27:47]And I said to her, I'm so impressed
[27:49]that you still have your uniform,
[27:51]but I'm even more impressed to fit into it.
[27:54]And she said, oh, I don't.
[27:55]And she lived at her shirt and the zipper was broken
[27:58]on the pants, but she sat there with her scarf to hide.
[28:02]And it just reminded me of what a great group of people
[28:05]flight attendants are, that it really takes something
[28:08]for a person to want to do it and to love doing it.
[28:12]And to be in their company again,
[28:13]after all this time has been just delightful.
[28:16]Oh, it's amazing.
[28:17]Do you have any parting advice for aspiring authors?
[28:23]Yes, I really do.
[28:25]Just write every day.
[28:27]And no matter what you have to do every day,
[28:30]other than you're writing, do it with good intentions
[28:33]and a big heart and an open heart
[28:35]because as long as you're writing someday,
[28:37]it's gonna flip and you'll be the writer
[28:39]doing that other thing as a secretly or quietly.
[28:42]But if you don't do it because your job is taking over your life,
[28:46]then you'll always be sorry, I think.
[28:48]Very true, good point.
[28:50]And last thing, what are you reading now?
[28:53]Oh, I'm reading the new Anthony Mara book.
[28:55]It's called the Mercury Project, I think.
[28:58]I'm a big fan of his, the Zara of the Love and Techno
[29:02]and Constellation of Vital Phenomenon
[29:05]are two of my favorite books in the last few years.
[29:08]And this is this new book which I've eagerly been awaiting.
[29:10]So I'm digging deep into that.
[29:12]It's about Hollywood in the 40s.
[29:14]So it's a really fun reading thing.
[29:16]This has been so much fun.
[29:18]I really loved your book.
[29:20]It was such a joy to talk to you about it after reading it.
[29:22]And thank you.
[29:23]Thanks for sharing.
[29:24]It was great meeting you, Zibi.
[29:26]And thank you for having me on.
[29:27]It's a pleasure, great to meet you, too.
[29:30]All right, take care.
[29:30]Have a great day.
[29:31]Bye-bye.
[29:32]Thanks.
[29:34]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[29:36]to Read Books.
[29:37]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zibi Owens,
[29:40]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:42]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com
[29:45]and sign up for my virtual book club
[29:47]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:49]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[29:52]for the Sound Editing.
[29:53]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:55]for providing this fantastic intro and outram music.