Thoughts in flight
J1 and I came back from Cali yesterday. We had a good time, but more on that later. What I must talk about right now are the number of annoying people who I encountered on the airplane, and how they are a drain on society.
The tattle-tail: We were sitting at the gate in Burbank, waiting for pre-flight preparations to finish. People were listening to iPods, reading, sleeping, and talking on their cell phones. As the flight attendant walked past, the woman behind us stopped him.
"Excuse me, sir," she said. "You need to make an announcement to tell people to stop talking on their phones. It's time to turn them off."
"Well, we will make that announcement when it's time, ma'am," he replied.
Come on. Did you also have to raise your hand and tell the teacher when people were passing notes in class? Do you call the police station and tell them that someone passed you on the freeway when you were going the speed limit, so obviously the must have been speeding?
Get a grip, and stop trying to tell other people how to live their lives and how to do their jobs.
The Sprawler: The guy sitting next to me was a sprawler. Listen...an airplane is like the back seat of a car when you were eight years old and taking a trip across the country with your siblings. Ok, so when you were eight years old and taking trips across the country, you were in an airplane, you say? Fine. How nice for you to have been rich. We drove, and I was crammed into the back seat of a Ford Escort with my two siblings. No, I'm not the least bit bitter.
Anyway, back to my point. Being on an airplane is like being in the back seat of the car with your siblings. There are clear demarcations of space, and only someone who is completely rude would ignore these boundaries.
Memo to the dude next to me: Your knee/thigh should not be in the area of my seat. I should not have to lean to the side to avoid a romantic shoulder tango with you. And I certainly should not have to reach under your arm to change my TV channels.
Seriously, on JetBlue, the space divisions are so obvious. The armrest with my TV controls are my space. Your space starts immediately past the edge of my armrest and extends to the far edge of your armrest. Monkeys could figure this out.
The Encroachers: This is similar to the previous category, but it is a more general problem. I am talking about people who instead of taking their neighbor's space instead take space from everyone on the plane. Ah yes....I speak of the dreaded "aisle creep."
Once again, we are talking about simple logic here. The aisle is not part of your seat. Just because you are sitting next to the aisle does not give you the right to put your leg, arm, elbow, or shoulder into the space of the aisle. And if you do, and if someone happens to bump your arm, do not give that person a nasty look as if it is their fault that you were hit.
Listen, I had nothing to do with placing your body parts in the way of everyone else. I'm not going to hit you on purpose, but I'm also not going to spend seven minutes inching down the aisle to ensure that I miss all the protruding body parts. It's like parking someone into a parallel parking space and then being angry when you come back to a scraped bumper.
The tattle-tail: We were sitting at the gate in Burbank, waiting for pre-flight preparations to finish. People were listening to iPods, reading, sleeping, and talking on their cell phones. As the flight attendant walked past, the woman behind us stopped him.
"Excuse me, sir," she said. "You need to make an announcement to tell people to stop talking on their phones. It's time to turn them off."
"Well, we will make that announcement when it's time, ma'am," he replied.
Come on. Did you also have to raise your hand and tell the teacher when people were passing notes in class? Do you call the police station and tell them that someone passed you on the freeway when you were going the speed limit, so obviously the must have been speeding?
Get a grip, and stop trying to tell other people how to live their lives and how to do their jobs.
The Sprawler: The guy sitting next to me was a sprawler. Listen...an airplane is like the back seat of a car when you were eight years old and taking a trip across the country with your siblings. Ok, so when you were eight years old and taking trips across the country, you were in an airplane, you say? Fine. How nice for you to have been rich. We drove, and I was crammed into the back seat of a Ford Escort with my two siblings. No, I'm not the least bit bitter.
Anyway, back to my point. Being on an airplane is like being in the back seat of the car with your siblings. There are clear demarcations of space, and only someone who is completely rude would ignore these boundaries.
Memo to the dude next to me: Your knee/thigh should not be in the area of my seat. I should not have to lean to the side to avoid a romantic shoulder tango with you. And I certainly should not have to reach under your arm to change my TV channels.
Seriously, on JetBlue, the space divisions are so obvious. The armrest with my TV controls are my space. Your space starts immediately past the edge of my armrest and extends to the far edge of your armrest. Monkeys could figure this out.
The Encroachers: This is similar to the previous category, but it is a more general problem. I am talking about people who instead of taking their neighbor's space instead take space from everyone on the plane. Ah yes....I speak of the dreaded "aisle creep."
Once again, we are talking about simple logic here. The aisle is not part of your seat. Just because you are sitting next to the aisle does not give you the right to put your leg, arm, elbow, or shoulder into the space of the aisle. And if you do, and if someone happens to bump your arm, do not give that person a nasty look as if it is their fault that you were hit.
Listen, I had nothing to do with placing your body parts in the way of everyone else. I'm not going to hit you on purpose, but I'm also not going to spend seven minutes inching down the aisle to ensure that I miss all the protruding body parts. It's like parking someone into a parallel parking space and then being angry when you come back to a scraped bumper.
posted by N at 11:20 PM
1 Comments:
Ah, but did i ever tell you about the time that I was seated next to this bald, over-weight AND narcoleptic guy who was telling me about how all the women in mainland China just *LOVE* him and want to sleep with him? Yes, in the middle of telling me the details of his sordid trip, he falls asleep. Mid-sentence. ON MY SHOULDER.
Talk about the seat creeps (and i do mean "creep" in both senses of the word).
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