Fellow passengers

As I write this, I am on a flight from Dallas to Portland. The flight has just begun and once again I am seated next to a small child. While I can deal with a little yelling and crying during a flight, my patience is much lower for the seat kicking I have been enduring. Seriously. Ever had your seat kicked for 4 hours straight? It is annoying.

The last flight was just downright comical though. It was one of those experiences where I didn't know if the situation was really ridiculous or if it was just me. It wasn't until phil and I started discussing our fellow passengers that I realized just how strange they all were. Either that or Phil is just as judgmental as I am (in which case we are a match made in heaven).

First, we sit in front of two woman traveling alone. One is older and the other is traveling with her small child. And while a little chit chat is nice at the beginning of this flight, the older woman would not shut her mouth. Here is what I can tell you about the woman. She lives on a "mountain" in Virginia. Her husband works for the city. Last winter was the worst winter ever. It took her an hour to shovel the snow between her front porch and her satellite dish but don't worry, she was still able to watch the Super Bowl. She was rooting for the Saints by the way. They lost power for 13 days and her husband wasn't even home. The city put him up in a hotel for the entire storm. She has a pet bird and a dog. She is headed to San Antonio to visit a friend. They are going to a fancy gallery party and to a wedding. They will only have to feed themselves 4 meals the entire time she is gone. she is meeting her mom at the airport. She is getting a wheel chair because it is just too hard to walk around airports. Her connecting flight was at gate C10. And she was undecided about whether or not she needed to go to the bathroom before her next flight.

Oh wait... you don't care? Neither did I! And this was after the first 5 minutes of the flight. Eventually I put my headphones is just to block her out.

Let's move on to the guy next to me. The first thing he did was pull out a file titled "Dallas trip." He was on his way to Dallas for an ADT sales convention or something. How do I know this? Because he pulled out his travel itinerary and studied it for the first 30 minutes of the flight. Why would you pull out your flight information for the flight you are currently on And study it, I am not sure. After that, he pulled out a small binder of articles on sales and leadership and proceeded to read and highlight them three times each. Phil was reading them from the other side of me. They almost all had animals in the title of the article like "who has the monkey?" and "dealing with Gorillas". I am assuming these are sales articles. But it made me think...

Are these articles he was given? Are these articles what the conference he was attending was based on? Are they required reading?

Basically he was pretty excited for his business trip. Phil is thinking he should stop with this whole PhD thing and go into ADT sales. Apparently he already completed the required reading.

And just know that you really should keep things to yourself on flights. Because people like me are totally all up in your business.


Love, Mrs. Janney