We boarded flight 701 from New Orleans to Denver yesterday afternoon a little hung over, a little tired, a little hungry and quite happy that we had a window seat not too far back from the front exit door.
We stowed our bag in the overhead compartment, careful to place it in gently as it contained a few old vinyl sides we scored in NOLA. (Pretenders first album and ‘Deceptive Bends’ by 10cc!)
We settled into our seat, turned off our iPad, cracked open “A Confederacy of Dunces” and commenced to read. A pleasant older lady sat down next to us in the middle seat and said “hello.” After a few minutes we glanced up to the overhead where our bag was stowed and noticed it was missing. We muttered “oh shit, where’s our bag” to no one in particular and the woman next to us said, “was it red? I saw that lady move it to another bin.”
WTF? – #1 Don’t fucking move my bag. It was placed there for a reason. It fit. It may have contained something fragile. It isn’t your god damned bag to move.
We checked on our bag and it was okay, so we went back to reading. The plane filled slowly as usual, then the sky waitress closed the doors. We were happy – the aisle seat next to the woman was empty! “Nice” we thought to ourselves – “we’ll have an empty seat between us – more room”! The woman never moved. We thought that maybe she was waiting for the plane to take off. We casually mentioned to her that the aisle seat was open and it was great that we would get more room. She nodded and mumbled something or another. The plane was being pushed back at the time then it stopped and the plane driver got on the mic saying that we were pulling back to the gate and deplaning as Denver had grounded all flights for 1 hour and 45 minutes.
WTF? – #2 “UGH, it is always something!” Actually it was something. Winds at the Denver airport were gusting to 50 M.P.H. So, we deplaned and got some trail mix to nosh and water to drink.
After an hour or so we were alerted to get back onto the aeroplane. We grabbed our seat. The woman next to us plopped right down back into the middle seat knowing full well that the aisle seat was fucking empty! We sighed and opened our book and began reading. Everyone was getting settled and the plane was making the taxi back from the gate when every child under 3 on the plane burst into spontaneous crying, screaming and fushbudgetry.
WTF? – #3 Why would you bring a tiny brat to NOLA in the first place?
We finally made it above 10 thousand feet and we were able to put on our noise canceling headphones and crank up a bit of Black Flag to silence the brat pack. Of course the woman next to us was all camped out in the middle seat – head phones on, watching teevee, eating popcorn, poking us in the side with her elbow, hogging the arm rest. We sighed again.
WTF? – #4 Why wouldn’t this woman move to the aisle seat? It was open. No one was sitting there. We were crammed all together sardine like for no reason. Was she digging sitting next to me? Was I emitting some nice pheromone that affected her post menopausal mind in a racy way from her past? Was she just fucking with me to be fucking with me? Or was she oblivious to anything but her own little universe? I’ll opt for the latter, but god damn, what a freaking flight.
We made it home from the airport in decent time, took a shower and went to sweet oblivion sleep.
The End.