Katrina: a year later

New Orleans has been in my thoughts today. As a kid, it was more than the closest big town to home. It was the place to go to when I grew up, the place where dreams would happen. New Orleans was the cultural oasis, the city to go to for cool. My favorite memories are two road trips from college. On one trip, my friend CW and I walk up to two officers in the French Quarter after we learned her car had been towed. The officers were talking to two men. The men, as it turned out, were handcuffed. Just as we approached the cops, they got a call on their radio that another crime was taking place. For some odd reason, they uncuffed the two men and took off. CW and I stood next to the would-be criminals; they leered at us. CW and I took one look at each other and took off behind the cops.

Another time, a slew of friends drove down in my 1979 Dodge Charger. Too much alcohol and other substances were consumed and I remember all of us sitting in Cafe Du Monde at some ungodly hour, devouring beignets and trying not to pass out. On the drive back to Jackson, the car windows were rolled down and Bruce Springsteen blasted from the tape player. I remember looking out the windows, and up at the dark sky overhead and then seeing the glow of New Orleans behind us.

That's how I think of NOLA, as this town that just glows, and I don't mean from industrial waste.

So tonight, as I sit many miles from the place I have always thought of as my second home, I'd like to suggest two songs for those of you who miss New Orleans the way I do. The first one is "Louisiana 1927." Aaron Neville sings it, but I think Randy Newman wrote it. The second is that classic sung by Louis Armstrong, "Do You Know What it Means To Miss New Orleans." Download them from iTunes, listen, remember the good times you had in New Orlean, and if you are like me, the songs will make you a little misty-eyed and give you a powerful yearning for a town worth loving.

Katrina's Poster Boy: Master of Disaster

With the one year anniversary of Katrina approaching us, there has been much talk in the media about the problems that still linger in New Orleans. Having family in NOLA, this is one topic that has personal meaning to me. So for today's post, I've uploaded a photo to Lablogda that represents two icons of people behaving badly. A baby (especially when they are on planes or in restaurants) and George W. Bush, the posterboy of the Katrina disaster. To be fair, babies have nothing to do with the Katrina disaster, except of course those that were affected by the flooding and resulting chaotic aftermath.

Bush, while not solely responsible, sure didn't help matters. Remember the image of him strumming guitar in San Diego during that time? Remember Heckofajob Brownie? Those were just the minor infractions. His approval rating took a plunge and a year later is still hovering around the 30% mark. He wasn't alone in his folly: the flood devastated the city and unrooted local, state and federal governments flaws. The only person who came out of Katrina a winner was Anderson Cooper.

The Feline Version of a Lap Dance

Sammy Davis, Jr. and Liza Minnelli are great examples of people behaving badly toward each other. I’m talking about my two cats, not the entertainers, by the way. I’ve discussed Sammy and Liza on this site before. They are Korats, sleek oriental cats with short gray fur and the kind of green eyes that launch acting careers.

Liza is a bit like her namesake. She’s old, overly dramatic, and squawks way too much. Likewise, Sammy is like his namesake. He’s entertaining, lovable and prone to excess. While one did drugs, the other eats too much and throws up. My cat is the latter of the two.

Sammy and Liza, the cats, hate each other, where to hear Liza the celeb dish, she and her Uncle Sammy adored one another.

Mostly Sammy and Liza the felines co-exist without incident. During the day, Sammy is upstairs, hiding under the night-table, sleeping the sleep only the very rich and house pets get to have, and worthless teens, and my sister’s ex-boyfriends.

Liza can be found downstairs, in the far corner of our office, huddled up between two bookcases, her butt facing the door so that if someone should walk in, she doesn’t have to look at them.

At night, if Hubby and I are sitting on the couch watching TV, the cats like to sit on someone’s lap. Usually, it’s the same person’s lap. This is where the trouble comes in. If Liza is sitting on Hubby’s lap, Sammy will walk up to her, pretend like he is about to happily lick her head, then chomp down on her ears with his teeth. She hisses and runs or fights back, and she’s even been known to completely ignore him. On those occasions, I notice, he backs down. She is victorious most at those times.

Liza doesn’t bite Sammy. He is the alpha cat. She usurps his territory quietly. He may get up from my lap to go take a sip of water, and she sneaks onto my legs so covertly that I don’t even notice the cat switch till I seem Sammy at my feet looking up, his face forlorn.

I know someone wrote a book about everything they learned they learned from their cat. I believe it was a huge best seller. I can see why. There’s something to be said for my cats and they way they best each other. Sammy may be the dominate of the two, but Liza is more often the silent winner in their battles. Of course, you could say that is just like any woman – or any crazy old lady.

Part II: the Snitty Slacker and Big Bones Bore

They won't leave me alone. They can't let bygones be bygones. They must torment me. Xanax. I need Xanax. Where's my bottle? Oh, there it is. Can I have a Stoli's on the rocks with that, please?

After the Snitty Slacker hung up on me as I was demanding respect, he actually did the work I had wanted him to do, then proceeded to email telling me that I was a client he was happy to let go as I was disrespectful to his admin and to him. Of course I was, they are twenty-something arrogant, terse twits who need a spanking. Mama never whipped them. Mamma didn't give them enough time-outs. Mama is a bad Mama and should have never been allowed to breed.

Then, I realized I had a deadline due with Big Bones Bore so I emailed her and asked her when it is due. She wrote back, "Today."

What? Today? I never got any notice that the deadline was even approaching. I emailed her and told her this. I then called her to see if we could work it out. I pitched an idea to her, but tell her I need more time.

"Not gonna happen," she said. She really isn't attractive enough to say "Not gonna happen." I've given it some thought. Super skinny tall models with tiny noses and Liv Tyler lips can pull off "Not gonna happen." Fat, ancient hags with haircuts they gave themselves by putting a bowl over their heads cannot. I am proud to say that I am not a fat, ancient hag and I have a darn good haircut, just ask my stylist, but I cannot pull off "Not gonna happen." You have to be screeching beautiful, okay?

I asked for an editorial schedule. She acted like I was a moron, and should know that there wasn't one -- after all, what decent magazine would have one of those pesky things? I tried to explain that her deadlines always caught me off guard and I was then forced to turn in dull, uninteresting articles.

She then lectured me on plagiarism. Long story on how we got there, but it involved some in-house copy that was given to another magazine for an article. She is an expert on plagiarism laws. I know, she told me in detail. I filed my nails while she droned on and on. I tried to picture her eyes, which are too close together, and how they would look if she would only get a new haircut. Maybe she could wear a head band and push those bangs back. Maybe my gay stylist could layer her head so the ends weren't as blunt as her demeanor.

She finally paused and I jumped in, saying, "look, all I'm saying is that I don't want to dial in the stories. It's like I'm just lying there in the mission position." I laughed. I got nothing from her. "That's a joke," I said. She doesn't speak. I don't speak. I'm offended yet at the same time curious. How long before one of us would speak? I couldn't stand the silence so I continued on, pleading that I was just concerned about the quality of the content I submit and needed more time.

"I sent you and email two weeks ago reminding you," she said.

"I didn't get it. Or maybe I did. I'll confess to senility."

"I would agree with that," she said.

Oh Big Bones. You are an awful person. You've made me believe in Heaven and Hell, just because I want you, after you die, to wake up in the middle of a bunch of terrorists and toxic bosses, all of you roasting in a large fiery pit. I hope the first thing you think about it is all the co-workers you offended, Big Bones, all the friends you could have made. The people who could have loved you if only you were a person worthy of love. But you weren't and you aren't. And at your age, you never will be.

The Snitty Slacker, the “Not-Responsible” Muslim, and the Big Boned Bore

Now today was what I’d call a bad day. To sum it up, I threatened to choke a Muslim, I had a slacker hang-up on me after I demanded respect, and the gal we call the Big Bones Bore told me I need to move past my anger, and that my problem was that I am short, and she didn’t have this issue because she was tall. She’s 5’5 – do you know how short I would have to be for her to think she’s tall. I'm short but she's delusional. And she doesn’t merely have big bones, she’s fat. But tell her that. Actually, don’t try to tell her anything. She knows it all. She knows more than God, she knows more than that all time winner on Jeopardy. Evidently what she doesn’t know is that you do NOT put a bowl on your head to cut your bangs.

Let me start at the beginning . . .

Our website is down, at least part of it – the part where you log on and get free info. Our programmer and our hosting guy have been duking it out for days blaming each other on the problem. Both are outside contractors. Both got their degrees evidently from some online school.

So after an exchange of emails where each blamed the other for the umpteenth time, I called the programmer. I got his annoying admin on the line who told me he was not available. We were on speaker as there were numerous people in my office who wanted to speak to him. The marketing group and the IT person. The Admin insisted on having my name, though I kept telling her to tell the programmer to call the IT guy. We hung up, we called the hosting guy, the Muslim. He started blaming the programmer. He said the programmer loaded something to the site that screwed it up. I know the programmer didn’t load anything. I lost it.

“I am so tired of you blaming him and him blaming you. Honestly, I’ve never worked anywhere where the site goes down so often,” I said, rather, almost screamed. Okay, screeched.

More words were shared and I said, “here’s what I want to do. I want to board a plane to California and go out there and choke you.”

Oddly, he got really contrite.

The programmer then returned my call and started screaming at me. He’s a little turd in his late twenties, and is under the impression that he is above reproach. I hope his peeppe falls off when he turns 30, you know, many years from now. He actually said, “the web problems have never been my mistake. Ever.” And I said, “Oh, you have never made a mistake.” He said, “That’s right.” Then he started yelling at me, saying, “you are too small of a client for me to take this kind of behavior. I’m happy to let you go,” to which I said, “yes, finish this job and have no fear, this relationship is terminated.” Then I said the line about how I didn’t care how small a client I was, I demanded respect and the bastard hung up on me.

Then I went to visit a friend and vent my woes, when his pal, Big Boned Bore walks in and plops her big boned, yet well-cushioned, tush down. She’s listening and she says, “you need to move on past this anger.” I said, “Life is short, I’m short, and I just got to get it all out. Besides it makes me feel better.” She said, “ahhh, I see. I know why I am never phased by anything.” Beat. “I’m tall.”

I then asked her did she really want to rumble with me given my morning and that I wouldn’t mind putting her in therapy. She assured me I could not insult her, she was above insulting. I should have said, “because you’ve heard it all,” but instead I said, “well you are insulting me.” She said, “no I’m not.” I ignored her. She repeated it three times and I continued talking to my friend. Finally, when we finished, I said, “well I better go make someone else miserable now.” To which she said, “if you tried to make me miserable, you have failed horribly.” I said, “I promise I will keep trying.”

Of course, there is a reason I can’t make her miserable. She’s already there. She is a mean-spirited, humorless, wretch with a bad haircut and an enormous ego. The question I have is why are there people like her in the world, or the haughty programmer who thinks he is above reproach, or the Muslim who can’t take responsibility. All these suicide bombing Muslims and I get the one who doesn’t want to be responsible for anything.

Lesson learned: not all men are created equal. Those are just pretty words designed to give marginalized school kids hope. D. H. Lawrence said that we are not equal, we differ in our spirit. I must be at the bottom of the heap, because those bastards today have sucked my spirit bone dry. My ass may have dimples, but my spirit, it’s downright anorexic.

Now where is my Xanax?

Let's Get to the Point

Dear Israelis and the Middle-Easterners they fight:

Leave fighting over religion to the experts: Christian fanatics.

Leave fighting over land to the experts: lawyers.

Thanks,
Binx

P.S. Neither of your cultures have very good food. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that in.

Rude at Red Rock

There is a new hotel/casino in Vegas called Red Rock Station. It was much hyped prior to its opening as the most luxurious casino off the Strip -- and it is. It is also the rudest off the Strip, which is why it gets special mention in my blog.

They cater to locals, and all the locals I've spoken with about it have at least one bad experience with rudeness either in the bars or the restaurants. As far as the gambling tables go, the service isn't much better. The other night, a pal went there, sat at the black jack table, started playing, ordered a glass of wine and got wine served in a water glass. When she complained, the waitress shrugged and said, "that's how we do it here."

Let me tell you how else they do it there.

This morning, hubby and I ate breakfast at the Grand Cafe, which should be renamed Grand Screw Up Cafe. There was a child inside screaming aimlessly, with white trash parents who were incapable of even thinking of disciplining the child. I complained to a waiter as he passed by, and asked him to talk to management. He did. I'll give him that. Then the waiter, and two managers stood there and stared at the child, sometimes glancing at me to see if I left yet. They did nothing but stand there and stare. It was a classic case of "do nothing and maybe the problem will go away." The child kept screaming, customers kept shaking their head, and the white trash parents sat there ignorant as can be. The two manager, never even offered me an apology, not even an apology laced in truth: "I'm sorry, lady, but the happiness of the ignorant white trash parents and their horrid, screaming child is way more important to us than you repeat businesss."

Earlier, when we had ordered, my husband asked for the "egg skillet with bacon." The waiter said, "the egg skillet with bacon. Right?"

"Yes."

Many, many moons later, he brought out the egg skillet, sans bacon.

"I asked for bacon," Hubby said.

"But you ordered the egg skillet. That doesn't come with bacon."

"But I ordered bacon."

The waiter said, "then you should have ordered the bacon skillet." The waiter never heard the maxim that the customer is always right, especially when they are wrong.

Hubby got his bacon, but afterwards, when the bill came, the waiter felt he needed to educate us. He brought out a menu. "See, next time you want to order the bacon skillet," he said.

"That's okay," I said. "You don't have to do this." That was my attempt at being nice. "This isn't college, dumbass," is what I wanted to say. "Don't lecture us you sniveling moron," is what I should have said. Instead, I got up and walked out, leaving Hubby to fend for himself. Besides, I really couldn't hear as that horrid child was still screaming aimlessly.

We will never go back, as this is our 2nd bad encounter at the Grand Screw Up. We may gamble at Red Rock in the future, and we may even drink at the Onyx Bar (because they treat us right), but I will not drink wine from a water glass, no matter "how they do things."

I have many more stories about this casino, like how they gave away my pal's charge card at the Lucky Bar to the wrong customer and didn't even apologize - this was after he had run up a tab of $1,000 bucks. If this were Iran, I'd say that was fine behavior, but for the swankiest hotel/casino off the Strip? That is just jackass rudeness.

They say God is in the details. I say Good Service is in the details. Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas, you may look glamorous, but you lack the needed details.

Is Rude a Disorder?

Duh, I spaced for a few days. I meant to post another entry from my NCY travel journal. For you repeat visitors, you'll be happy to learn this chronicles yet another bad experience with a kid.

August 3, 2006, Day 5 of My NYC Trip
Non-smokers have it easy. If someone is smoking around them, they can say, "Excuse me, would you put that cigarette out, please? It's bothering me."

For those of us who find kids annoying, we are not as lucky. I think child perverts are regarded more highly than we are. After all, they love kids, albeit, too much and in the wrong way. For people like me, who would rather stick thorns in our eyes than have to sit next to a kid on a plane, there is no sympathy. There must be something wrong with us, people think. We have unresolved issues, we are told. Yadda yadda yadda, would you put that kid out, please?

I sat in row 42A on Continental Flight 569 today. It is the window seat on the last row. A 12-year-old girl sat next to me and she felt that the armrest between us belonged to her. She didn't actually mind sharing, to her credit, we just had to have our arms touching. I didn't want kid cooties, so I huddled over as far as I could to the far side of my seat. It didn't matter, she kept elbowing me. I counted. She invaded my space 36 times on a 5-hour flight. I kept saying, as politely yet frostily as I could, "Excuse me." Meaning, "Excuse you." She kept saying, "Sorry," in a tone that suggested she resented having to apologize. Her mother kept talking about me as if I wouldn't hear. "Just give her room. She's one of those." I'm not sure what 'one of those" meant but I assumed she meant I was either a) weird or b) a child-hater. By the way, I don't hate children. I loathe their parents for having them and then forcing them on me. Big difference.

At one point, the kid got up and the mother leaned over and said, "I'm sorry if she moves around so much. She has a condition."

The child seemed fine to me, just rude. Perhaps that was the condition the mother meant.

The Nefarious Art of Cutting

August 1, Day 2 of My NYC Trip
“Are you just going to stand there and look cute are or you going to help me?” The bellman at the W Times Square asks the taxi driver. I’m in line for a taxi, and one has just pulled up to unload a passenger with luggage. The bellman is trying to pull suitcases from the trunk while the driver stares passively.

A young thin woman cuts in front of me.

“Excuse me,” I say. She turns and looks at me like I’m lunchmeat.

“I’m next.”

She says something in Spanish. She must be from Latin America. I’ve decided long along, from experience, that they are famous for cutting in line.

The bellman notices the occurance, though, and he motions me to take my rightful place in the empty taxi. I look back at the woman, who is looking away, as if she is trying to ignore not only me, but also her guilt and her etiquette crime.

I arrive at my destination. The Javitz Center. There is a trade show going on. I walk up to registration where a minor line has begun. I’m talking to someone I know as we wait to get our badges. It’s a man who has been in our industry for thirty years. I am complaining about the humidity in New York. Before walking inside the trade show, I could see a bank of moisture, barely visible, hanging above the street, an almost translucent cloud.

“Toughen up,” he tells me. He is trying to be nice in the way New Yorkers try to be nice. It is obvious he does not want to hear my complaints. There is an awful lot of humidity in the air. That much is obvious. Why belabor the subject?

I have been facing him and when I turn back for a moment in line, I see that a man has cut in front of me. He does not appear to be with the person who was in front of me, as she is in deep conversation with someone else. And frankly, it’s obvious by looking at the two of them that they aren’t together. She wears a hair band in her blonde pageboy and is dressed in lots of primary colors. She wears chunky gold jewelry, and speaks with a slow drawl. This woman is from the South somewhere. The man wears a white shirt, black pants, and a yarmulke. He stares off into nothing particular, as if he is avoiding eye contact.

“This man just cut in line,” I say to my friend, loud enough for the offender to hear.

“That happens all the time,” he says. “Israeli,” he whispers.

What is it with foreigners? Americans take cutting in line to be a vital sin. It’s right below cheating on your wife and right above running a red light. Everywhere I go in NYC, someone is cutting in line, and they aren’t American. Has the rest of the world banded together and decided that the way they will get back at us for whatever ill we’ve caused on their country is by cutting in front of us in line?

I can jus see a secret session at the UN – minus the American delegation. “Forget war,” some foreign diplomat says, “you know what would really piss them off? Cutting in front of them in line at the airport.”

I remember once, I accidentally cut in line in San Jose, California at the Winchester Mystery House. I cut in front of a woman with blonde wash and wear hair. You would have thought I had spit on her child. She berated me up and down. The reason I inadvertently cut is because she had been standing off to the side and a few feet back from the person ahead of her. I thought that person was the last person in line.

“Honest,” I said, after explaining the situation to her.

She gave me a look, suggesting I was not a skilled liar, which I’m not. Evidently, I’m not skilled at telling the truth either. I exist somewhere in between, in a world of half-truths, due to my own inability to see things as they are. Rather than call a spade a spade, I tend to call it a metal thing you can use to dig or to hit someone over the head with.

I learned a lesson that day. Scope out the line. If you see someone who might be next but you are unsure due to their stance, ask this question. “Excuse me, are you in line?”

Life is often gray. Some things are certain, such as death and taxes, some things are not, like: is that guy across the bar looking at you or is he looking at the hunky guy standing next to you? One thing we all have in common, at least in America, is that we at least want our rightful place in line.

The Perils of Flying

July 31, 2006. Day 1 of my NYC Trip
Some kids want ponies when they are growing up. I had a pony. Some kids want dogs. I had two. Some kids want a play house. My grandfather built me one. It was the size of a dining room. I had a lot as a kid, but we weren’t rich. Having so much, I naturally wanted more. I wanted to fly places. I wanted to see the world. Mainly, I wanted to climb aboard a silver jet, sit in first class and order stewardesses around. “Get me a coffee,” I imagined barking. “I want caviar.”

Only a kid would think coffee and caviar were an exotic combination. As I grew up and started flying places on my own, I realized that air travel was not at all what I had dreamt of as a child. In fact, the number one problem with flying was that planes were full of kids. And tall people. Really tall people who don’t quite fit in coach. Or fat people. Fat people don’t go out of their way to get good seats. It’s one of those psychological phenomena, the way poor people started voting for Republicans even though it wasn’t in their best interest. Fat people always end up in the middle seat next to me, their legs, spilling over into my space so that we sit knock-kneed from Vegas to New York.

If the person next to me is not fat, they are a squirming Cantonese child, spoiled by her aged grandmother sitting in the aisle seat. Cantonese children like to sit next to me and stare at me. They like to pull on my hair while they sleep. When they wake me, and I stare nastily at their grandmother, the grandmother puts a Cantonese hex on me or gives me an evil eye. “Do not criticize me or my grandkid,” they seem to be saying with the evil eye.

If the person sitting in the middle seat next to me is not a fat person or a Cantonese child, it is a young man who wants to talk. And talk. He has confused the plane for a fern bar from the seventies. He thinks the plane is a place to meet women, or score.

“I know you,” one guy said to me once on a flight from Dallas to San Francisco.

I looked at him, searching his green eyes, trying to find something familiar. I had never seen this man. He had sandy hair and a mustache that wouldn’t quite grow in though he must have been thirty.

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“Oh we know each other,” he said, quite serious. He seemed slightly hurt that I didn’t remember him.

“I’m really sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met.”

He shook his head, my vacuity clearly annoying him. “Not in this life, silly,” he said. “We knew each other in a previous life.”

What was truly scary about this encounter is that the young man was not hitting on me. He believed we had known each other. I was his sister, Mirabelle. We lived on a plantation in Virginia. I’m so glad our past life was nothing cliché.

In my job, I fly a lot. I fly to Hong Kong, to New York, to small towns like Orlando, which I guess is not so small, but seems that way in comparison to New York of Hong Kong. I fly all over. I have learned many things from flying. Bring a jacket on board, even if it is the middle of summer. Airplanes are cold. Bring a water spritzer on board to freshen your face. Don’t drink alcohol when flying, it makes jet lag worse. Don’t drink caffeine either for the same reason. Of all the things I learned, there is one large pervading truth: people are jackasses when they travel. They are rude, self-centered, loud, smelly, inconsiderate, arrogant, and thoughtless and if they have brains, they forget how to use them.

As I write this, I’m on a flight to Newark. The plane is a pungent algorithm of smells. There’s flatulence, mixed with smelly feet and armpits, and the sharp scent of burned coffee. The movie has just ended and people who didn’t want to watch the flick, a show about a teenage mermaid, sleep, or try to. Behind me somewhere sit two women from what I imagine is Brooklyn or Queens. I’m not good with accents. One of them has not stopped talking for the last twenty-five minutes. Her voice hits our ears, an aural invasion. I think, “Go ask her to be quiet.” I don’t. I shift in my chair. I think, “Go slap her.” I don’t. I look at the woman across from me, who has plugged in her iPod and is listening to music of her choice. I envy her and wonder why I can never remember to pack my own iPod. That’s what they are for, to block out the world you don’t want to hear.

Oh great, the woman next to me is now snoring. The man in the seat ahead of me and across the aisle has removed his shoes. He really should not have done that. He stretches his long legs, bumping the back of the seat ahead of him. The person, a young man with spiked blond hair, a Billy Idol almost wannabe, turns around and gives him a look. The long legged man does not se it. I think of myself, as I strike these keys. Is the click click click annoying the people around me, as they are all annoying me. We are out to get each other, we people in rows 19-21, just as the people in the rows 22-24 and so on are doing.

When I boarded the flight, the attendants had stuck one pillow in between the aisle and middle seat, and laid a blanket over the aisle seat. One blanket, one pillow per row. Presumably, the winners of the prize were the people in the aisle seat, if they got their first. When I reached my seat, 20c, an aisle, there was no pillow or blanket. Someone had taken it – not my row mates, as they had not yet arrived. A kid sat ahead of me in 19C. She did not want her blanket, and for two hours, it lay where the attendant had left it, over the top of her seat. I grew cold and debated taking that blanket. But she is just a kid, and she might want it, I thought. I sat there and thought about it, but I was afraid if I took it, someone would say something to me. “God, you’re so rude,” the long-legged man might say. “That blanket is for that little girl.”

Just as I had almost convinced myself that I was not cold, and the even if I was, cold was good for you as you burned more calories, the woman sitting next to me leaned forward, and casually lifted the blanket from the back of the kid’s chair. She took it for herself. She did this in a way that I could tell she did not give it a second thought. She did not have an internal dialogue between her inner angel and devil. She just did it. No regrets. No looking back. “How selfish,” I thought, with utter envy.

I got up and walked down the aisle to the bathroom. I had to wait, and wait. There were two restrooms, both occupied by people inside who were evidently writing a novel, slowly. There’s a little boy behind me, holding his treasures in his hand and stomping his feet back and forth. I think of offering him my place in line, but my middle-aged bladder wants immediate relief, too.

As I stood in line, between the woman in the aisle seat in 30 D and the woman in the aisle seat in 30C, they started talking around my body.

“This is so rude,” 30 D said. “I have no privacy back here. People just stand in line and crowd us.”
I looked around, uncertain where else I could stand. I thought of crawling in her lap. Would that be less rude?
“And then I have this big Norwegian goof ball who is crowding my tray,” 30 D said to 30 C who acted as if she didn’t know her. “Look how far I have to lean over.”

I stole a glance. I recognized the Norwegian goof. He had been in front of me in the queue to board the plane. The boy knew tall. He must have been 7 feet. Seriously. I imagined that he had pituitary gland issues. I did not even come up to his elbow. He sat in 30 B, the middle. His knees crunch against the back of the seat ahead of him. I looked at 30 D, and she returned my look with the evil eye. This flight had more people giving the evil eye than a Turkish Knitting Circle. I think, "this is what flying has become. A plane full of people giving each other the evil eye." It's the best response we have to noisy kids, smelly feet, flatulance, burnt coffee, all circulating in a flying can.