Yummy | Lisa Scottoline

We used to say, don’t rain on my parade.

Now we say, don’t yuck my yum.

Francesca taught me that expression.

Stick with me, I’m cool.

I won’t yuck anybody’s yum.

I’m no yum-yucker.

However, there are things I don’t really understand.

For example, I was reading the other day that in Brunei, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, people have been getting on planes that go nowhere and then returning home, to the same spot. The plane tickets are being bought by people who said they “missed flying.”

This, I don’t understand.

I don’t miss flying.

The only good thing about quarantine is that I don’t have to fly anywhere.

In fact, I would buy a ticket not to fly anywhere.

What could anyone miss that much about flying?

The plane could crash and they could die.

Hello, we’re in a global pandemic. We could die at any moment. We don’t even have to leave the ground. Just walk outside and take a nice, deep breath.

Here’s my advice:

Save your money.

For your heir.

By breathing air.

By the way, the airlines call this the “flight to nowhere.”

That’s the perfect metaphor for my second marriage, if you pretend that the plane crashed, burst into a billion pieces, then the pieces exploded and turned to metallic dust that sprayed in people’s eyes, blinding them in agonizing pain.

Also imagine that I was the only one on the second-marriage plane.

I was both the pilot and the only passenger.

Plus my bank account.

Which also exploded.

But to return to point, Royal Brunei Airlines calls these flights a “dine and fly” program, because they serve local cuisine.

OK, I have another idea.

Stay home and eat.

That’s why they call it local.

It’s home, not 38,000 feet in the air.

Thirty-eight thousand feet up is the exact opposite of local.

Here’s a good rule of thumb for local: If a jet engine is involved, it’s not local.

But I don’t want to yuck anybody’s yum.

If it makes you happy to fly around in an airplane, I say, good on you.

Qantas Airlines has even instituted a seven-hour flight that would depart and land in Sydney. Honestly, I get that, only because I like koalas. I have an irrational goodwill toward Qantas because they have a koala in their commercials. I flew to Australia for the Sydney Writers' Festival and was happy for endless hours on the plane because there was a koala on the side.

So there’s a koala exception to all things.

Don’t yuck my koala yum.

According to the article, one of the passengers said they miss looking out the window and seeing the clouds.

Funny, I can look out the window and see clouds from where I’m sitting.

So can you, but you have to tilt your head up.

You can’t turn your head directly sideways.

Maybe no one told them that, about the tilting.

And another passenger reportedly said that they just wanted to “drag their bags through the airport and go check them in.”

Say what?

OK, here’s what I do all day:

I sit in my chair in front of a computer until evening, then I sit in another chair and do needlepoint until bedtime, when I go lie down.

I lead the most consistently boring life ever in the history of boring lives.

But I have never been bored enough to want to drag my bags through the airport and go check them in.

Some of these flights are marketed as scenic, and I get that, in principle. The plane flies over pretty things, and you look down and see them.

But I’ve never gotten a charge from seeing things from a plane.

I’m never close enough to the window, so I’m always craning my neck or I miss the scenery.

Once I jumped out of my seat to see the Grand Canyon.

I bumped my head and all I saw was beige.

Some people are really angry about the flights to nowhere, as bad for the environment. Reportedly the airlines are purchasing carbon offsets, but I don’t understand how that works.

How much good air do you have to buy to offset bad air?

And how do you get the new air up in the old air?

These are questions for smarter people than I.

People who fly nowhere.

Look for Lisa’s first historical novel, “Eternal,” coming on March 23, 2021. Also look for Francesca’s debut novel, “Ghosts of Harvard," on sale now.