Flying these days is like playing the slots in Vegas. You take your seat hoping for cherries, but you know the odds are against you and it's usually not a surprise when you end up with lemons instead.
And boy, have I gotten some big, old lemons the last few times I've flown down to Florida.
There was the woman with the dog which she smuggled on board (did the TSA not notice her purse walked through the x-ray machine, or perhaps she convinced them it was a guide dog despite the fact that it was a Chihuahua?)
All I know is, somehow I became her accomplice. My job was to keep an eye out for approaching flight attendants and sound the alarm if they got too close. At that point, she would stuff the dog back down in her purse, throw her coat (and mine) over it, and proceed to regale me with her entire lengthy medical history in full technicolor detail beginning with her appendectomy in 1952 right up to her hip replacement last year. Tim, on my other side, pretended he didn't know me and slept through the whole thing. (He always preferred Roulette to slots anyway)
Then there was the guy who apparently didn't get out much.
"You look like you travel a lot," he commented perkily, leaning across the middle seat as I settled into my window seat.
Why, do I have my frequent- flyer miles stamped on my forehead? Sensing that after an opening like that, the conversation could only go downhill, and I was effectively trapped in my seat for the next few hours, I dug out my ipod and opened my book.
"Do you come to Florida often? You're really pale. Don't you tan?" I was right. This lemon was rolling downhill very quickly.
Fortunately (for him), I was saved the necessity of a reply as the tenant of the middle seat arrived.
"My, you're a big girl," the silver-tongued Casanova quipped as she sat down with her McDonald's bag and gave him a look that could have frozen boiling oil.
"I mean, you're tall and big boned," he blithely continued on, not seeming to realize his life was on the line. "Do you play basketball?"
Well, at least he wasn't my lemon anymore.
At Christmas, I got to sit next to Mrs. Clean. Before sitting down, she pulled out a monster-sized pack of anti-bacterial wipes and proceeded to clean her seat, both armrests, the overhead bin handle, the back of the seat in front of her and her hands. She then offered a wipe to all of us around her (I'm not sure whether we were supposed to clean our seats or ourselves from head to toe), sat down, pulled her coat over her mouth and nose (I guess she forgot her hospital mask) and complained (to me) about the temperature on the plane (ironically, it was too cold for her) and how unsanitary the conditions were (if she thought the seats were unsanitary, wait until the first time she sees an airplane bathroom. I'm guessing she will need CPR--after the person administering it uses a wipe, of course).
On my other side, Tim read the paper and dozed while I made lemonade.
This last trip, I was seated next to a woman who was flying for the first time. Between the maintenance problems, lack of fuel and high winds, well, let's just say that this was no cherry either.
Half her time was spent grabbing my arm, demanding "What was that?", at every creak, shimmy and bump (and I wanted to help ease her fears, honestly, but I was a teensy bit busy running around in my head screaming, "We're all going to die!" to do much for her.)
The other half was spent directing me in the use of her camera and trying to get the perfect shot of all the pretty lights on the ground (I hoped she still thought they were pretty when we crashed into them.)
Tim, of course, slept through the bulk of this, which is just as well since he never really liked lemonade anyway.
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