American Planes

Flying on a plane is always wonderful.

When we went to visit my cousin Bebop for his high school graduation last month, there was a man on the plane successfully executing the loudest snoring I had personally experienced being generated by a human being.  I could hear this guy snoring from several rows away over the roaring of the jet engines.  This was the kind of snoring that illuminates for you where the turn of phrase "sawing logs" came from.  And then you realize that the expression came from the days of manual saws, and in fact this is more like a "chainsaw" kind of log-sawing sound, or a "coordinated orchestra where all of the instruments have been replaced with buzzsaws" kind of sound, or perhaps an "entire paper mill processing a tree into pulp in under a minute" kind of sound.  That's the kind of loud snoring this guy was producing.

On the way home from that trip, out of revenge and a sense of wanting to enhance the suitability of the plane's name, I proceeded to conk out for the entire four hour flight back on the dreamliner (while Husband patiently tried to type on his laptop despite having me sprawled out into his seatspace).

Even knowing that no one could ever snore louder than the guy I heard on that one flight, the latest flight I took was destined to be terrible.  We flew last Thursday night - the night before the Day of Independence miraculously and wonderfully fell on a Friday.

like it specifies in Article III.

But that had its consequences, which were primarily consequences to the sanity of those waiting in line for security at the airport.

Specifically, the lines were insanely long and insanely unfair.  We had a moment where one of the TSA agents was going to shuffle us into either the teal line or the red line.  (Of course we couldn't go in the green line because that was the TSA pre-check line and of course I can't GET pre-check because the waiting time for an interview is currently, literally, five months.)  And though maybe I'm not illustrating this quite right, you can see that the teal line is three times as long as the red line.

It's not a great picture, but it's better than the rage-versions I drew on the back of a blank page of a brief while on the plane.

You can guess which line we ended up in.

Of course, the gray line hadn't even started when we got in line: they opened it up once we were a little bit into the red line and just stuck there.  In sum, we had plenty of time to ponder the gross unfairness of the line system.  It was both unjust and inefficient, which is like a double whammy to an attorney with an econ degree.

Once we were on the plane, Husband and I didn't get to sit together, which was meh but okay since I had some work to do.  I watched out the window a bit, half-listening to a small British child discussing with her mother the merits of buses while realizing I forgot my earplugs.  When we reached cruising altitude, I (with great resignation) pulled out my stack of papers to read and BAM -

the girl in front of me reclines DIRECTLY into my face.

Here is a public service announcement for the people of the earth: if you are not SLEEPING on the plane, don't recline!  Spare your posture and sit the heck up.  You will also be sparing yourself my undying loathing to the extent that interests you.

I am trying to work with the seat in front of me three inches from my face, realizing I can't look up any cases because airplane wifi is $19 and essentially worthless anyway, when the girl in front of me starts watching a movie.  Out loud.  With no earphones.

Which is, in more orderly societies, punishable by 18 months hard labor cleaning TSA rubbermaid bins with nothing but a toothbrush MOISTENED BY YOUR OWN SALIVA AND...

and then I saw the sunset throwing magenta light against a mountain glowing against a lavender twilight.  I glimpsed my own profile cast in sharp relief on the cabin wall by the orange sunset fire from the opposite window.

It was very instagrammable.

And I then noticed that the girl in front of me was taking a photo out the window too.  While her movie still played on out loud.  As she ignored it.

Sunset or no, it was lucky that we landed soon after.  Lucky for her, that is.  

A Functional Adult Should Not Get This Irrationally Angry

I just had an encounter at the grocery store.  While I was checking out - a pretty large order, as a certain Functional Adult's parents are coming to visit soon - I realized I'd forgotten diet coke, which is imperative insofar as a Functional Adult's Mom needs diet coke to eat pizza, and a Functional Adult needs pizza to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and a Functional Adult's Dad needs to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics and inevitably comment on how it's not as good as the ceremony at Beijing was.  

So I needed diet coke.  The checker was still working on scanning many of my items, so I told him I'd be right back.  I literally dashed through the store to the soda aisle - realizing, as I did, that I nearly bowled over the same accommodating fellow who had made room for me in the egg aisle.  I grabbed the diet coke quickly (since I have the layout of my local Safeway memorized) and dashed back.  Couldn't have taken more than 90 seconds.

This is clutch.

In fact, when I got back, the checker hadn't even finished with the items I'd already put on the conveyer belt.  But some old woman had decided to push my cart with its remaining items aside and start putting her items on the belt!

I was somewhat astonished and pointed out, "That's my stuff."  She gave me an aggressively condescending look and said, "Well, you were gone."  I gave her my best "b*t¢h, you crazy!" look and said, "I was only gone a second!"  And then she gave me an extremely dirty look and said, "I waited at least FIVE minutes." 

At that point, I decided to let it go. I rolled my eyes a little at the checker but said, "Oh well, guess I wasn't as fast as I thought I was," and finished checking out.  Even though she kept shooting me looks.

I feel like when you do the nice thing and take the high road, you should get a pleasant sense of satisfaction at being a mature and kind member of society.  Or at least you should be able to forget about it quickly.  Neither of this happened to me:  as I drove home, I got madder and madder that I'd taken the high road.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

I began to wish I'd used my words to rip that upjumped elderly to shreds.  I spent my entire car ride home coming up with various forms of cutting remarks I could have made to her:

Ad Hominem (making use of shopping cart observation): "So, this is how you get your jollies?  You just stand around at Safeway being snide to people for no apparent reason?  I'm guessing that's because you're sad and old with nothing better to do in your life, and you are going to DIE ALONE DRINKING AN 8-OZ CAN OF SODA."

Imposing the burden of proof / aggressive wagering:  "Really?  I was gone five minutes?  Prove it!  Let's see your stopwatch.  Oh, you didn't time it?  Yeah, I didn't THINK you knew what you were talking about."

Marshaling the evidence:  "FIVE MINUTES, you say?  Even though the checker was still scanning the items I left on the belt?  What if I asked the checker how long I was gone?  What if I asked to see the store security footage?  Do you think that would show I was gone five minutes?  Or would it just show that old hags can be idiots too?"

Logical / Accepting her premise as true:  "I'm sorry, even if I were gone five minutes, what did you think was going to happen?  Did you think I was never coming back?  Or did you think the checker would just unscan the $150 worth of groceries that he had already scanned, scan yours, and then re-scan all of my items?  Or did you maybe not think at all because you don't have enough brain cells?"

Sarcastic:  "Oh, see, when I said I was only gone a little while, I meant in clock time.  But you're probably measuring in ugly old woman time."

With religious overtones:  "You're so old, you shouldn't be lying like this, because you're likely to die soon and you'll have to explain your lying ways in the afterlife."

AUGH.  I am STILL MAD I didn't say ALL OF THOSE THINGS TO HER.  Which is ridiculous, I know, because who cares some old woman shot me dirty looks in the checkout line over some diet coke.  Except I apparently care really deeply and now want to ruin an old woman's self esteem over it with any number of references to her age and impending death.


Aaaaaaaand here you have piece of evidence #284 I am still not a functional adult, because I cannot let crap go.

Item of Evidence #283.  Though, actually, I bought this for my parents.

A Functional Adult Gets the WORST Headache

Ways dealing with a headache is different, now that am functional adult:

• Have own laptop
• Have husband to bring juice / water / other fluids
• Do not have mom to bring juice / water/ other fluids.  Or to make special foods of sympathy and concern.
• Need no one's permission to lay on couch all day, groaning occasionally
• Have Kindle to attempt to read, rather than old-fashioned book
• Will have to drive self to doctor and miss work to do so

Ways dealing with a headache is the exact dang same as before was functional adult, legal adult, or imagined adult (i.e. teenager):

• Head hurts too much to read anything, be it laptop, kindle, or anything
• Caretaker has additional things to do other than pity me / provide juice
• Still hate everything and everyone on TV because they are not curing my headache
• Considering medical feasibility of head transplant
• Of necessity, whine about headache to whoever out in Internet-land will listen
• HATE HATE HATE HATE headache