People

In my travels, I've seen luggage conveyor belts jam, but never flat-out break, until yesterday. I watched some very resourceful airport luggage employees climb into the area under the belt and throw bags out one by one. Few passengers were annoyed; most were so happy to be off the plane that they weren't bothered about waiting longer to leave the airport.

It was the least painful flight to HI I've ever experienced, perhaps because I had an aisle seat on an exit row. The woman in the window seat tried to switch with me, and I would have been willing to work with her had she been any less annoying. Yes, I did specifically request an aisle seat because I wanted an aisle seat, but whatever. It was her passive-aggressiveness-- she'd asked me several times if I wanted the window seat, whether I was sure I didn't want the window seat, even after I told her that I did not but that if she really wanted the aisle she could have it. Then she said what she really wanted was to sit next to her husband, but that was irrelevant because the guy sitting next to him wouldn't switch. The last straw was when she yelled back, "amazing how something like this would happen on our anniversary!" perhaps in a final, passive-aggressive bid for sympathy, but it just hardened my resolve. Besides, I have to be functional the next day; she just has to sit on a beach. That and I'd brought "Stolen Lives" by Malika Oukfir, her memoir of twenty years in dessert jails in Morocco, specifically so that I wouldn't dare to feel sorry for myself for having to sit on a plane for the better part of a day. I couldn't help but project that mentality onto her; while I felt slightly bad about not changing seats, I really didn't see why I should just because she asked (just because she felt right asking doesn't mean she had a right to it). What didn't help was the "whah, whah, whah, I can't sit next to my husband on a long flight." Had she said, "could you switch seats? I was just locked up in solitary confinement with rodents and cockroaches," I would have found it in my heart to accomodate her, even in spite of the annoying child the aisle behind us to whom I wasn't about to get any closer. It's more offensive when the children are older because the parents really could manage the volume of their voices but just don't choose to. Incidentally, there was a baby on the previous flight (just three hours) who behaved like a saint.

I'll have worse internet access after this week but will hopefully also have better stories.