November 29, 2008
there was also a cat on my flight (I could hear it miaowing)
My flight home from Chicago on Thanksgiving day was a gigantic nightmare — oh, the flight was on time and my luggage was right there when I got off and the driver was waiting for me; that wasn’t it.
The other people on my plane apparently decided that if they had to travel on a holiday they could behave like complete assholes. Seriously.
There was a huge group of not-English-speaking tourists who spent the hour before the flight yelling across the waiting area to each other and laughing hysterically. Then they all traded boarding passes so that they could sit together, which meant that the one child in the group had an adult’s boarding pass and not his own, which totally slowed everything down when we went to get on the plane. And THEN, when some of them still didn’t have seats together, they just moved into other random seats, willy nilly.
When I got on the plane, there was a man in my seat. I very nicely said, “I think that’s my seat.” And he says, “Yah it is.” And then there was an awkward silence because I’d been awake since four am and was waiting for him to either move or ask me to trade seats with him or SOMETHING FOR GOD’S SAKE. Instead, he just stares at me.
Finally I say, “What seat are you supposed to be in? We can trade.” And he says, “Yah, 15B.” And then there’s another slightly awkward silence where I wait for him to say thank you for swapping seats. But apparently that was too much to ask; he turns back to his friend and resumes the conversation that I apparently interrupted with my request to SIT IN MY ASSIGNED SEAT.
So I slog to the back of the plane and sit down next to a very lovely woman who waits until I have stowed my bag under the seat and tucked my magazine into the pocket and wrestled my coat off because it is a thousand degrees in the plane to ask if I would be willing to trade seats with her sister, who is three rows in front of us, so they can sit together. But she asked so nicely and it’s Thanksgiving after all so I say sure and I get my coat and bag and drag them back up the aisle and tap the woman on the shoulder. And she looks at me and says, “WHAT?!?”
So I explain that I’m going to trade seats with her so that she can sit with her sister and she huffs “FINE” and pushes me out of the way to get to the other seat. And then I realize that I’ve left my InStyle in the seat pocket of the OTHER seat, so I slog back to get that and she ROLLS HER EYES AT ME.
Goodness.
So THEN I sit down in this SECOND seat that is not mine and stow everything and THIS TIME I get my phone out because the iPod function is the ONLY THING that is going to save me, and I say a polite hello to the woman next to me who says, “Well I wasn’t ABOUT to change seats for them,” and I realized that she’s pissed that I did change seats.
So I say, in my most sympathetic voice, the one I use with the kids when I’m not really feeling all that bad for them, “Oh I know, holiday travel is such a nightmare!” And then I jam my ear buds in my ears.
But that’s not the end.
Remember the child who had the wrong boarding pass, from the very beginning of this story? He’s sitting behind me, and he’s maybe two-ish, and apparently he hates the airplane. Or at least the part where he has to wear a seatbelt, because he’s not wearing one and the flight attendant is VERY CALMLY explaining to his mother that until he is buckled up, we cannot leave the gate or leave Chicago. And the mother is saying that yes, she will buckle him, but she’s waiting until the last possible moment.
And the flight attendant takes a deep breath and says, “This IS the last possible moment, ma’am.”
(Apparently the kid screamed the ENTIRE WAY from Chicago to Oklahoma City. Thanks to the fine people at Apple, I did not hear him.)
Wait! Still not done. We land in Oklahoma City, on time, no problem, and we taxi to the gate. And we wait and wait and wait and the plane gets hotter and hotter. There is a man on the flight, not much older than Wade, who is clearly in bad health; he is on a walker and is accompanied by no fewer than eight family members, all doting on him. It took them forever to get ON the plane in Chicago (because they preboarded THE ENTIRE GROUP rather than just this man and someone to help him) but again, whatever, it’s Thanksgiving, I’m feeling for the guy.
Or I was until we got to Oklahoma City and they let him get off the plane first, with his ENTIRE entourage and their carry on luggage. And it took FOREVER because he’s on a walker and doesn’t move very fast and apparently STOPPED TO TALK TO THE PILOT on his way off the plane. And the kid behind us is still screaming and the air has been turned off and I seriously thought people were going to riot.
Happy freakin’ Thanksgiving.
