The Trip (Pt 2 The Flight)
Posted on | July 2, 2010 | Comments Off
After the ridiculous (but of course necessary) check by the TSA agent at the Security checkpoint, she had little time to make it to the gate. She made her way over to the Departures monitor only to verify her gate number was indeed the same as it was when she printed her boarding pass the night before. It was. It also was pretty much at the furthest point of the terminal from where she was standing.
She took off in a fast walk trying to balance her laptop bag which was indeed extremely heavy with all the crap she stuffed in (none of which was specially scrutinized by the security agent) on top of the rolling carry on (which did contain the suspect pork roll and coin purse of potentially dangerous quarters).
As she arrived at the gate, they were already seating passengers in her area of the plane and she walked right up only to be given a new boarding pass with a new seat assignment “as to accomodate a family” which was no problem, she would never want to split a family apart on a plane. (Little did she know, on this flight, she herself would want to split apart.)
She found her seat, found the strength to toss her bag with the potentially dangerous quarters and suspect pork roll into the overhead and settled down. She could finally relax since she seemed to be going a mile a minute since stepping foot out of the car.
It seemed to take a while for the plane to load and that was when she noticed them. All of a sudden a rather large group of at least 30 or so (maybe more!) teenagers (later to be determined as 16 year olds) invaded the plane. They were everywhere. Although they weren’t sitting next to her, they were directly in front of her and apparently just everywhere.
But that was ok. They must have a chaperone and they will behave like proper young adults. Ha! Who was she kidding.
She got out the magazine to see what the movie would be and to her disgust, it was the same movie Continental showed last summer when she flew out to visit her Mother. She didn’t like it then, she certainly wasn’t going to like it now. This was fine anyway, because the teenagers were standing in the aisles and in the seats in front of her blocking the screens.
She tried to read, but all of the teens felt the need to speak as loud as possible to drown out the sound of the airplane. She couldn’t focus on her book with all the yelling going on. And at one point, she thought to herself that one girl in particular should be asked to keep her voice down. Then she realized she was one of the chaperones. This was going to be a long flight.
She even tried putting on her ipod and curling up against the window to perhaps sleep but when her ipod was on full volume and she still heard the teenagers and the ever so intellectual conversations teens have, she was ready to run for the emergency exit.
They stood around in clumps blocking the service carts and making her mouth burn as she waited for the beverage cart to make it to her after putting hot sauce on her enchilada and taking a bite without the safety of a beverage nearby. (That was her own stupidity but she was hungry and cranky.)
At the end of the flight the teens were all told to stay seated until all the other passengers had exited the plane, the nicest thing the chaperones had done for anyone yet. Of course right in her area, one of the teens had to exert his manly defiance and stand up anyway, blocking her row’s easy removal of their overhead items until he realized what a moron he was and got back in his seat.
Upon exiting the plane and greeting her mother, she went over to the ticket counter to complain. The gentleman didn’t seem to care one bit as she ranted off in a rather manic hysteria of the experience she’d had… a movie she’d already seen on their damn plane, not that she could see it cause the teens were in the way, not being able to use the bathroom because the teens were in the way, no one controlling the teens, the teen the teens the TEENS. Both the man she was talking directly to and the man at the next counter over got a smile and she knew her mission was complete. She knew full well that nothing would be done. But making someone smile was always worth something. And then she went off to use the restroom.
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