Champagne Flight is a short story written by Jill Norris. It is about a sixteen year old girl who is also the narrator. Since her name is never mentioned, I am just going to call the narrator through the rest of this essay. The story is about themes such as growing up and experiencing life. It is about young naivety. About trying to be someone else. And about how people are not always who or what they seem.
As the story begins the narrator is about to enter a plane for the first time in her life. The reason for this is that she is going to Washington, where she will be living with her parents. Her parents have actually been living in Washington for quite some time, because of a new job that her father has got. But they wanted the narrator to stay and finish her semester and exams, just as any other parents would probably do in today’s society, where graduation is becoming more and more important. So she has been staying with their old neighbors.
Onboard the plane we hear how she tries to act like an adult instead of the teenager that she obviously is. She acts like a grown-up would do and drinks red wine and champagne. So because of the “free” champagne I assume that she is flying first class or something similar to that. This could indicate that her parents, and especially her father as I see it, is earning a real lot of money.
She then meets the older woman Serena Sinclair. A blond lady who is sitting close to her. Serena joins the narrator and they start talking and drinking. Mostly about Serena and her life.
Suddenly the narrator wakes up. Apparently she has fallen asleep. Either because of too much alcohol or because of something Serena has put in her class. When she wakes up Serena is gone. So I immediately thought that Serena had stolen from the narrator or something like that. But a moment later the stewardesses comes out of the toilet with Serena under their arms. After this the narrator do not talk to Serena again before they reach Chicago Airport which is their destination. Here the narrator has to catch another plane. But on her way to this plane she meets Serena once again. Serena is lying on a cot. The narrator talks to her one last time, and realizes that she is not at all who the narrator thought she was. We can see that when Serena says: Well, honey… a stripper doesn’t sing”. The narrator then feels embarrassed. Because the narrator has looked up to Serena until this moment of the story. She has been impressed by her and her life. She thought that she was a singer, and she pretty much wanted to be like her.
And being someone that you are not is as I have already mentioned one of the themes in this story. Serena is dreaming of a life that she has not got. And the narrator wants to be a grown-up. Which she is not. And the whole “being older you are” thing is something that fills a lot in her mind in most part of the story. She does for example say: “my hair was brushed back from my face, because a friend had told me it made me look older”. And as I have also already mentioned she tries to act like an adult. To gain respect I guess. Or perhaps just because she thinks that being 16 is not as cool as being 20. And it actually works because she gets threated like an adult. And does furthermore get to taste some of the sweet life on first class with champagne an good food. A life that the title “Champagne Flight” might refer to. But by seeing how miserable Serena is feeling. She finds out that after all this life may not be so good. So you could say that by experiencing the grown-up life, she does actually become a lot older herself. And by gaining this experience, the narrator realizes how good a life she has at the moment. Because yet she is just teenager with a family that loves her, and with no problems she has to worry about.
Serena had a perfect life as well with her first husband Hank. And I am sure that she really loved him. It was the kind of life that she had been dreaming of her whole life. But unfortunately he died in a car accident. And therefore it also became a life that she could only keep dreaming about. When the narrator then says that she is sorry about Hank, Serena answers with: “Honey, that was a hundred years ago”. So she is trying to say that everything is okay. And trying to convince herself that she has moved on. But truth is she has not forgot about him, and she definitely has not moved on in her life. She has had two men since Hank, but could not get along with any of them. I do not think that she has got any family who cares about her. No one who loves her. And her job as a stripper is soon to be over, as she is getting to old for it. Which she knows. We can see that when she says: “they like them young”. So all she has got now is her memories from the past. She is living a life thinking about what she had and what she could have been. She says that she could have been a star. But in the end she did not become anything. She is still dreaming of the life she had back then. And she will probably keep doing that until the end of her days. An end that could actually have arrived earlier than expected. Because the fact that they dragged her unconscious out of the toilet room. And that a nurse had to take care of her in the airport. Could be because she had actually tried to commit suicide onboard that airplane. A suicide attempt that might have appeared in Serena’s thoughts as a wish of getting away from her lonely life.
The song She’s Leaving Home, written by The Beatles in 1967, is also about a person who is leaving something. And in the song we hear about a girl who leaves her home in the morning while her parents are still sleeping. When they then wake up and finds the note that she has left for them, they are of course devastated. Obviously there is a reason why the girl in She’s Leaving Home is running away from her home and her parents. She is not feeling well. She is feeling lonely. And she has been feeling like that for many years. And just like she is feeling lonely, Serena is feeling lonely as well. And like the girl leaves her home Serena tries to “leave” her world.
Another thing in She’s Leaving Home that can be compared to Champagne Flight is that the girl in the song, who I assume is still young since she is living with her parents, is now going to experience the rough grown-up life, where you are pretty much on your own, and she will face some experiences that will change her as a person. Just like the narrator in Champagne Flight also got her view on the world and on her life changed, when she meets Serena Sinclair. And who knows, perhaps the girl in the song will end up returning to her parents again. Realizing that her life with them where not so bad after all.