Check out my Taz hat. Not purchased from SkyMall, but pretty badass none the less. Credit: Emily Dreyfuss
My parents didn’t love each other anymore, so at 10, 7, and 2 years old, we flew unaccompanied between Idaho and LA for visits. We may not have had chaperones or the security of an intact nuclear family, but we had one essential comfort: The SkyMall catalogue.
As the eldest sibling, it fell to me to read the descriptions to my brothers. I ad-libbed.
“THIS is the garden gnome we’d need if we lived by ourselves in the forest. We’d set this up outside our rotten out tree trunk to warn away bad guys.”
“What bad guys?” little 7-year-old Ben would ask.
“Uh, that bad guy,” I’d say, pointing to some smelly adult on the plane.
We devoured every page–even the ones with the posters of slogans we didn’t understand. Why is that cat hanging in there, we wondered?
My favorite was the convertible furniture section. I was big into playing house at the time, pretending I had no parents and was in charge of my own destiny. The centerpiece of said destiny was surely going to be that magic-looking bureau that actually opened up into what the catalogue called a liquor cabinet but looked to me more like where a witch stored her potions. I was no dummy; I knew what liquor was, and I knew people abused it and went to something called “Ah” to deal with that, so I figured instead of liquor I’d hide way better things, like makeup and food. Or magic potions if I ever came across any.
When my dad would pick us up at LAX, we’d bring our copy of SkyMall, dog-eared, poured over.
“Dad, can we get the life-size tiger for your house?”
I can only imagine how much he wanted to laugh in our faces, but divorce does a tricky thing to parents: it makes them never want to say no to you. That year, he let us pick our Christmas gifts from SkyMall. All of them. Literally. I have no memory of what we actually chose. He flew us back to Idaho so we could spend the holiday together and I just remember the elation of picking up the phone in the back of the headrest on the Delta plane and calling a human being from the air. The line cracked, but from down deep below the thin air, a woman’s voice said, “Hi, thanks for calling SkyMall.” Outside the window, smog and clouds skidded past and I was talking on the telephone to a human being who was going to send us presents!
The possibilities in life were limitless.
That was the only time I ever bought anything out of the catalogue, but Ben spent a good decade ordering Christmas presents from its pages. He did this for two reasons: first, he saw it as a sort of tradition, beginning on that trip in 1991; and second, he inevitably was flying to whichever parent we were spending the holidays with and hadn’t thought about a gift for anyone yet.
Before the Internet, before Amazon, SkyMall was the best option for slackers with no cash but a credit card furnished by family guilt.
“Mom, I bought you a bunion strap and a stepping stool for your dog!” Ben would say, never able to keep his gifts a secret until Christmas day.
“YOU bought it? How?”
“With your credit card.”
“Oh. That credit card is for emergencies, honey.”
“It was a Christmas emergency, Mom.”
There was no answering that.
SkyMall was our babysitter. Our distraction. When we got older we delighted in mocking the absurdity of it, how ridiculous and unnecessary was everything in its pages. In this way, we explained to each other that we were maturing, that we weren’t dumb little kids anymore. When I became a teenager–embarrassed by everything and everyone–I’d tease the boys for liking anything in the catalogue.
“That is SO pointless,” I’d say.
“OK, we can stop looking at it,” Ben would say.
“No, no,” I’d protest. “Harry is having fun.” Harry, wide-eyed and three years old would narrow his eyes into a look that seemed to say, “I know I’m being used.”
SkyMall was a tradition. An absurd, capitalistic embodiment of everything that was shallow and wrong with our lives, and yet it also brought us comfort. No matter if the plane was delayed, or we were stuck alone on a layover, missing whichever parent we were leaving, missing the friends and the life we were leaving behind each time we went between homes, it was there to make us laugh. To let us roll our eyes. To surprise us with a new level of novelty and frivolity.
SkyMall, that stupid wonderful completely American wonder that, with its insistence that you take your own free copy, announced it was your right as a human in the ‘90s to never not be shopping. Never not be consuming.
Of course, I didn’t think about how genius it was for them to tap into such a captive audience, stuck with nothing to do but wait. I never felt manipulated back then. I was a kid. Now it’s not hard to see how the business model wasn’t sustainable into the aughts and beyond.
When I fly now I try to write. Or sleep. Or squirm. Or, who am I kidding, look at Twitter. I haven’t noticed a SkyMall on the last 10 planes I’ve flown but I’m sure it was there, slick and expectant in the seat back flap, amid the wrappers and detritus of former travelers. Waiting for someone to notice it.
I’m sorry I paid $7 for inflight wi-fi instead of reading you, little shopping catalogue. Forgive me.
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