Ahhh, holiday travel. When the peanuts are banned and the in-flight
movie's been hacked up and G-rate-ified just when a bit of Brad Pitt booty
would do you do you so much good, when your small child and all the crap they
require during a simple cross-country trip could very easily outweigh you and
the four people you feel sorry for sitting around you. Oh, and then there's all
the pee. In the name of jet-fueled in-law exasperation and the Baby Jesus, don't
forget all the pee.
It is probably newsworthy enough that a woman who probably paid way too much
to fly during the holidays, waited patiently in a security line that was far
too long only to have to remove her shoes and have her underwire examined by a
rough-handed female TSA agent, then burned her mouth on a seven-dollar
Starbucks coffee that was many degrees too hot, boarded a plane in a manner
too-her dish for human beings to hold on to any Christmas cheer, hunted desperately
for a tiny corner in an overhead compartment sixteen aisles away to cram her
sole regulation carry-on into and then slid herself between two
loud/obnoxious/talking over her/snoring/armrest hogging people into a seat that
an Italian model would be uncomfortably squeezed into and FINALLY found herself
stuck in a urine-soaked seat that in turn, offered her a urine-soaked outfit. And
because airlines and air transport and airplane riders are what and who they
are in this moment of customer un-service time, nary a flight attendant or
fellow rider offered her sympathy, extra clothing or assistance. Oh, my heart
goes out to her to know she spent the entire flight and walk through some
obnoxiously gigantic airport wrapped in a plane blanket that was probably nasty
enough before it covered up her pee-stinky self.
The thing is, you know some kid who was scared of the blue gunk in the plane
potty or who was (literally) pissed at their mom for making them stop kicking
the seat in front of them or who was just bored as hell by the G-version
of Knocked Up playing on the screen four rows to the front, is the one
responsible for the offending puddle. And you know some parent, already strung
out on carrying all of the North Pole in a rolling duffle bag and the idea of
another year of Aunt Gertie's green bean casserole disaster and flying with a
screaming kid, realized it, shuddered in complete terror and then booked like
hell off of the plane before the flight attendant caught on...or caught a
whiff. The question is, which one of you is the parent of The Plane Peer?
Come on, 'fess up. We know you're out there and we're pissed.
