Airline Etiquette

Okay, so I’m no Emily Post or anything, but there’s definitely a few unwritten rules for peaceful airplane coexistence out there that people have been failing to observe as of late. Don’t get me wrong; I love flying and am at my absolute most relaxed when traveling, but I can’t help but notice some things.

First off, if you’re in a row of three seats, the middle seat gets both the armrests if its occupant so desires. There is no argument here — well, perhaps if a person large enough that he can’t help taking up an armrest or five, but those are not the people this rule is aimed at. I’m talking about the people who have no trouble fitting in an airline seat and yet need to splay out as much as humanly possible.

Look, if you’re window, you have basically the entire fuselage upon which to rest your selfish limbs. Don’t start getting into the DMZ of the poor folks who are stuck between you and the aisle who can’t lean one way or the other — and yes, I happened to be sitting in the middle during the last leg of my recent trip back from New York. The cramped quarters aren’t good for anyone, but come on, let’s come to some sort of peaceable arrangement, okay?

Secondly, if you’re going to have a spirited discussion about who prefers windows to aisles with your “neighbors,” you don’t need to project your voice. You’ll get your message across to everyone else in the cabin and possibly other planes. From four or five rows away, I could hear some guy jabbering spiritedly away to his fellow passengers about one banal thing after another and all I wanted to do was strangle him with my specialized in-flight headphones. I think that would’ve shut him up, but I was stuck in the middle seat, so I didn’t get a chance.

Parents, this one’s for you: learn to control your kids a little. I can understand that the cabin can be a scary place for your children — not to mention the discomfort associated with pressure change — but honestly, do you have to let full-blown tantrums and yelling go unnoticed? It’s hard, I know, but some of the parents I couldn’t help but observe weren’t doing jack squat to shut up their spawn.

Furthermore, teach your kids some manners. One of my flights was almost heaven — my own armrest, some interesting conversation, a whole can of ginger ale from the flight attendant — save for some of the most foul-mouthed kids sitting behind me. Now, they weren’t speaking loudly, so at least only one row had to suffer, but still — where do kids get off thinking they speak like that in public? I won’t regale you with the details of their imprecations, but suffice to say, I was offended that third-graders got away with this kind of language.

In closing, a humorous story which most of the family (the majority of my readers) already knows:

My father and I were waiting for the last leg of our flight (Detroit to Rochester) when the gate attendant got on the PA to announce Something Serious. Apparently, our flight would be host to a child with a severe peanut allergy — I assumed the child in question was with the family standing in front of the desk at the moment (and also whom Babba and I were recently appraising due to the strange fashion choice of their other daughter: pajamas). 

I’m not sure if this was a request of the family or just a bit of “above and beyond” on the part of Northwest Airlines, but the gate attendant then asked all passengers to dispose of any and all peanut products prior to boarding. This included items sealed away in luggage.

Now, to fully grasp the insanity of this request, please bear in mind that if a child is just a few molecules of peanut oil away from anaphylaxis, why is she in one of the most heavily-trafficked places that a person can possibly go? Such a condition is extremely serious, but even so, any and all peanut products? Are you kidding me?

Anyway, Babba immediately starting grousing about his snacks — some peanut butter fudge cookies from home and a sealed bag of peanut M&Ms — both sealed away in his suitcase. There were the usual snarky remarks (“Why don’t they put her on the peanut-free airline?”) and the sarcastic threats (“They’re getting my M&Ms only by prying them from my cold, dead fingers,”), but he conceded the cookies only. All of this was much to the entertainment of the first-class businesswoman sitting next to us at the gate, who then said Babba and I were funny and should start a routine and go on tour.

I’m still not sure how to react to that one. At any rate, the rest of the trip was full of various references to the Peanut Non-Incident, such as:

“This dinner is really good.”

“Oh, you like it? You should wrap some up and take it home with you.”

“I don’t know, somebody on the flight back might have a casserole allergy.”

So there you have it. Take some notes if you need to, as there’ll be a quiz on Tuesday.

Just Venting

I apologize (again) for my complete and utter lack of posting. Sometimes life gets in the way of my loafing around.

Dear Equus Magazine,

Yes, I am aware that in signing up for a free subscription to Horse Illustrated, I opened the floodgates for all sorts of horse-related junk mail. But please, three letters are enough. Plus, it doesn’t help that you’re sending me very non-orthodox regular letters, so you get my hopes up every time I see something from you. Then they come crashing down when I realize this ‘hand-written’ letter is actually an ad for your magazine. Please stop.

But if you really must keep doing this, my junk mail name is T. Furrows. Please get it right. Everyone else has.

And one more, because I just thought of it:

Dear old guys in the locker room at the Y,

If you really must tell me about your experiences in the war, or how you like your eggs, or your opinion on how my generation is screwing up the country, for Pete’s sake, please put on some pants or at least a towel or something. I prefer my conversations to be clothed.

Hi Mom

A mug caught my eye the other day.

Now, to understand the significance of such an occurrence, please bear in mind that my family drinks a lot of coffee. In order to ingest such an inordinate amount of coffee, we use a lot of mugs. Mugs of varying ages, designs, shapes, and colors fill the cupboard above the dishwasher. There’s the blue Olympics mug from Italy, the Fightin’ Irish mug from Notre Dame, the light blue Global Warming mug that used to have a heat-affected disappearing map of the world on it until dad put it in the dishwasher, etc.

So one day I was emptying the dishwasher of its usual load of eight million mugs plus a few butterknives when one mug caught my eye. It wasn’t a particularly impressive mug; the chipped rim, scratched handle, and faded cartoon on the side suggested this was a cup past its prime. Still, the image of a harried woman, plus the caption of “if you had my kids, you’d drink too,” triggered a random memory:

I can’t remember how old I was at the time, but I do remember it was mom’s birthday. Being that I was light in cash flow but heavy in creativity, I decided to make mom a card. This would be no ordinary card; no, this birthday card would be pretty much the most unintentionally funny thing I had ever drawn up until that point in my life.

Of course, I wasn’t near clever enough to come up with some trite and snarky card on my own, so I decided to “borrow” a bit of creativity in the form of a mug that had just come into the family’s possession. On it was a harried woman over the caption of, “If you had my kids, you’d drink too.” I decided to elaborate on the joke a bit, as the subtleties of the initial cartoon were lost on my childish mind. I grabbed a pencil and a hunk of construction paper and got to work.

When the big day hit, mom woke up to flowers on the kitchen table from Dad, plus the prerequisite mushy card. And then, next to the thoughtful gifts from dad and my sister was my then-magnum opus, a card depicting a badly drawn harried woman over the barely legible caption, “If you had my kids, you’d drink too.” Next to the woman were two dinosaurs: a stegosaurus and a brontosaurus, dressed to the nines in striped shirts and propeller beanie caps, both saying, “Hi mom.”

Despite the obvious logical difficulties in a human being giving birth to two full-grown dinosaurs approximately two hundred times her size, it made perfect sense to me.

Ah, the mug memories.