Hail Of A Day

I had the good fortune of getting bumped up to first class on a flight back the other day.  That always makes one a happy flier.  One thing I’ve found is that no matter how many things you give someone: upgrades, gourmet food, bars of gold, they still want more.  The woman across from me was having a hard time putting her bag in the bin above her.  The flight attendant told her that the one above her was particularly tight and she needed to move it to the next bin down.  So as she was about to do this, a snooty New England couple was just coming to their seats right behind her and saw that she wanted to put her bag in the bin above their seats and the wife lost her mind.

“Well, what are we supposed to do?  We won’t have anywhere to put our bags.  It’s not fair. Blah, blah, blah.”  All the while her husband is standing back with his arms folded and a mighty scowl etched on his face.  I decided to intervene, more out of a desire to shut the windbag up than any humanitarian reason.  If something wasn’t done soon I was afraid she would spool up and internally combust.  So I suggested that they put one of the bags in the spot that was originally over the single woman’s seat.  The husband begrudgingly started trying to get his bag in the narrow space.  It was surprisingly harder to fit than I thought.   But, he was committed.  He shoved and crammed and forced a good size bag into what apparently was a compartment for holding a pack of cigarettes.  Red faced and huffing, he turned to me as if to say, “See, you jerk, I knew this wouldn’t fit well.”  I said, “It was like wrestling a hog, huh?”

Instead of laughing or even ignoring me he said, “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never done that”.  And he wasn’t joking.  Suddenly, I’d been deftly self-labeled as some sort of hillbilly.  My two choices were to turn around and sit down or to get more sarcastic.  So I turned into Jethro.

I said with a thick accent, “Really?  You should give it a try.”

“I have no desire to.”

“Boy, you don’t know what you’re missing.”  My last response was so over the top and dripping with redneck sarcasm that I think he figured out I wasn’t actually serious.

After we all settled in, finally, we were getting ready to take off and I decided to get my laptop from the overhead bin that was over their heads.  As I pulled the laptop out, a book literally exploded out of my bag and fell into the crazy lady’s lap, opened and ready to read.  I thought, oh, here we go, they’re going to go off on me.  Fortunately, she laughed about it and said, “Is this a good book?”, so I said, “Yes, I can’t recommend it forcefully enough.”  We all laughed and I sat back down.

It’s kind of silly that people can get so worked up about the most trivial things.  Even I was too quick to get upset about her reaction to the bag fiasco.  One person can usually diffuse the whole thing by showing kindness. Sarcastic doesn’t help in the middle of a skirmish, but I suppose it helps make for better blog entries.