From the moment you book a flight, you have decided to put an inordinate amount of trust in regular people. We have to not think about it, or else we wouldn’t go anywhere. Basically the ENTIRE affair is a giant trust exercise but instead of just letting your body drop into the arms of that weird person in your gym class, you are putting your life and energy and hopes and dreams into the hands of average regular people who are just trying to make it through life like you are. Every trip, I add folks to this list of people who make trusting others really fucking difficult during an already difficult time.
Pocahontas trusts no one and gives side eye to all.
Crazy Hat Man, I am literally breathing in the spittle that just came out of your mouth when you snored. Any flaky dandruff or skin dryness that is hovering around your body is heading straight into my nostrils and ear holes. The air rolling through your body will soon trundle right into mine. And we know all this. We signed up, nay, PAID, for this opportunity. We are all in this together. So for God’s sake man, why would you choose today of all days to wear a random weird hat? Why couldn’t you just dress normally when you know we are all pretending everything is fine as we are fly through the air in a giant metal death trap? Why should I have to sit here and wonder if you are insane? On top of everything else! Put your special hat in your carry on luggage and stop being damn ridiculous.
White Parent, when we have to stand and watch you let your toddler play all along the baggage conveyor belt, literally just in front of the sign that tells you not to let children do that – you break our trust. When you tiredly tell little Madeline/Briony/Jake to keep their hands away, but do nothing when they pay you no mind, we have to sit and think about how they are going to lose a finger. As sad as that will be for you, what about us? We are tired too, and a baby’s finger being amputated right in front of us will most certainly impact our traveling. So now I have to stand here and be mindful that what I am hoping is that my bag comes RIGHT NOW so I can grab it and go before the bloody loss of a tiny appendage interferes with my plans.
I have to live with myself screaming inside ‘GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE CONVEYOR BELT LAURA/REBECCA/CHARLIE BEFORE YOU RUIN MY WELL-DESERVED VACATION WITH YOUR GODDAMN TRAGIC ACCIDENT!’
Is that fair? Why should I have to be confronted with my selfishness just so your child can run free? Buckle a monkey strap around that kid or grip ’em up the way Janika’s mama just did her.
Mumbling Pilot… WOW. Just wow. So you either can’t enunciate or do not know how to adjust the volume on your microphone system. I need you to be able to do both of these so that I feel you can fly this huge plane. When you are talking to us and it just sounds like ‘Shush shush shush 20,000 feet shush shush shush dog water crackle crackle ding,’ you make this whole affair way harder than it has to be! All of us back here saw that Denzel Washington movie, and you probably did too, so you KNOW we are wondering if you are high. Speak clearly. Ask your crew if they can hear you properly in the cabin. Sign up for Toastmasters. Just please, sort it out.
Solitaire (Oxy)Moron: It seems you don’t know that the point of the game solitaire is that you play it by yourself. In fact, that’s how it got its name. And yet… YET, you are including this ENTIRE PLANE in what should be your single, solo pursuit. Your tablet has the volume up all the way, and so you involve us every single time you drag one card to rest on another and it makes that stupid whooshing noise. Every. Single. Time. You just drove a woman to the edge of sanity, causing her to yell out, “Jesus Christ put it on silent!” And you didn’t. You didn’t.
Jacket Vandal: Humanity survives, if you can call it that, because of some unofficial, yet widely accepted rules that we all follow. A jacket on a chair means what? *cups hand to ear to hear you all speak in unison* “The seat is saved.” Exaaccctly. I didn’t make it up, but I don’t live with faeces-throwing orangutans so I play along, even if a jacket is stretched out over like 3 seats and I’m balancing popcorn and sodas and the lights are going out and I can’t find a spot. I’m not an animal. I struggle along spilling my expensive snacks to look elsewhere for a seat. So when you walked up to Gate 34, lifted a jacket from a chair and placed it in your lap, you left me to assume that it was you that had been saving that seat.
And so 15 minutes later when I see a man walking around, looking at and under chairs with a confused expression, I think, ‘nah’ and dismiss my gut telling me to yell out to him, “Are you looking for a jacket?”
And then 10 minutes after that, when you get up to use the bathroom and put the jacket down and your travel companion asks, “Whose jacket is this?”, and you say, “I don’t know, it was there when I sat down,” – do you know what that does to the entire human species??!!
It wasn’t your rahssclaad jacket??!!! Why the eff did you sit down in a saved seat?? Why pray tell didn’t you at least move that poor man’s jacket to another chair?? You held it in your lap? Are you an alien or clinically insane? Which one is it??!
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(To be continued when more people act like savages.)
