Not long ago, I was in New Orleans on a business trip.
That by itself isn’t so strange. But this trip was unusual in a couple of ways. One of those is that it was a long-ish multi-day trip. Another is that the day I arrived I actually had a couple hours of free time instead of having to go directly from the airport to a business event. Even better, I arrived in daylight, which was great because it meant I could walk around New Orleans, get a little exercise, and see some sights.
But this isn’t a story about seeing the sights in New Orleans
That’s another whole other blog post that I’ll probably get around to in a week or two. This is a story about my return trip back from New Orleans on the airplane.
I had been all week in New Orleans. Friday, I returned to Northeast Ohio by way of a couple hours’ layover in Atlanta. I was on a completely full flight from Atlanta to Cleveland.
I was seated against the window, and there were two other women in my part of the row, and every other row was packed full as well. The attendants had a lot of trouble getting everyone to put their gear overhead or under their seat, and we were running late. I was tired, having spent a pretty good chunk of the day flying on top of starting the day with early meetings before my first flight.
So what is so surprising about a full airline flight on a Friday afternoon?
Nothing really. It’s pretty common. It seems that most flights are full or even overbooked.
The flight was full of people coming back from or leaving for vacations and people coming back from conferences and business meetings. Everyone was pretty tired. You know how people get that dull, I’m-so-tired-of-this-I-can’t-speak stare? Pretty much everyone had it. The flight left in the evening from Atlanta and would get into Cleveland late.
I sat in my seat, people sat in the seats around me, the flight attendants finally got everyone settled, and then the plane took off. When we reached cruising altitude I angled my seat back and tried to sleep.
At least, that was my plan.
It didn’t work out that way, because as soon as I put my seat back I could feel a kid behind me kicking my seat.
I was determined to put up with the annoyance and not bother the people behind me. Now, I have traveled with little kids. I’ve watched my own kids kick the seat in front of us. Kids don’t always realize when they bother the person ahead of them. I remember long, late flights in less than ideal circumstances when it was a major achievement to avoid a tantrum and a huge win to get a toddler to nap. Anyway, I reasoned that soon enough the kid would probably fall asleep.
But it didn’t work that way. Instead, the kicking grew worse. It was very fast, hard, even aggressive. I didn’t want to confront it but decided I had to. I turned around to find the kid’s parent. That’s where the poem picks up.
Use Your Words
It’s as if we no longer can maintain
the fiction of civility. And I don’t mean
divorces and arguments over
and over again. We’ve given up
even the small considerations:
help with luggage. But you didn’t ask.
Picking a dropped receipt off
the terminal floor. Covering
a cough with a hand. And to the man
in seat 29A of the packed Delta
flight 1307, Atlanta to Cleveland,
Thursday, December 5th, 2019
I say this: use your words, dude.
You’re a grown man, bearded,
you have glasses which should have
corrected your vision, should have
shown you kicking and punching
my seat was not as good as a
simple: excuse me, would you mind
putting your seat forward? And to you
grown men sitting next to him
watching this until I turned looking
for a parent of the toddler I thought
kicked my seat, to you silent ones I say:
Shame on you. Use your words.
No, it wasn’t a kid behind me who I could tell “Use Your Words”
That’s right–there was no toddler behind me, no tantrum-throwing kid, but an adult. He glared at me and said, “Can you move your seat?”
To which I replied, “Is that what you were trying to do, punching my seat?” Because, by now, I could see he was not able to kick it with his knees as much as he could punch.
“Yeah,” he said.
I glanced at the other guys in the row with him, who looked away. Cowards.
“Next time, maybe just ask,” I said, turning around and moving my seat forward. “It would be easier to use your words.”
If I wasn’t so tired, I might have left my seat reclined. I’d like to know how long he could punch the seat or what the other guys in the row with him might eventually do. But antagonizing an obvious jerk is never really a good idea. He never did have the decency to apologize for his behavior. Not when I moved my seat forward, not when we exited the plane, and not when he brushed past me in the terminal while I rummaged in my bag for my car keys.
There’s a term for this kind of thing: air rage.
Yes, Delta has already heard my complaint, though there probably isn’t anything they cane do. But air rage incidents are apparently on the rise. Unfortunately, the reported incidents almost all involve alcohol or drug use, so that’s the kind of incident that gets attention.
Hmmm…maybe there’s a murder mystery in this?
If I had time to write a murder mystery, I’d make this jerk–and his silent row mates–the victims. Instead they get off with just a poem outing their childish actions, or lack thereof.
Hmmm… a murder mystery titled “Use Your Words”… three victims whose only connection is taking the same flight and sitting in the same row of an airplane… maybe it isn’t too late…
If you enjoyed Use Your Words
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.