“I have to go to the bathroom.” The young woman next to me tugged at her boyfriend’s sleeve just after takeoff, somewhere around 10,000 feet. “I really have to go.” She leaned over to me and tapped me on my shoulder, “Excuse me, I hate to do this, but I really have to pee.”
The thing about standing up at 10,000 feet while the plane you’re on is currently engaged in an ascent intended for climax at 32,000 feet, is that you’re not supposed to. There’s a handful of other reasons, mostly involving physics as well as FAA regulations and simple common sense, but essentially, you’re just not supposed to. I mulled it over a bit, and unhooked my seat belt to make way for my neighbor. After all, if anyone was going to fall, it’d be her. And, in the interest of comedy, I had hoped in addition to a possible failed attempt at competing with nature’s favorite law, I’d also get to see an adult wet themselves publicly in a dramatic setting. Such an event would make my life.
Minutes later she was back, the attendant forcing her back to her seat. “That bitch won’t let me pee,” she whined to her still quiet partner. “I really, really have to pee.” She looked to me, “There’s going to be a problem, this is an emergency.” I nodded apathetically. The voice of my father rolled through my head: You should have gone before we left.
After situating myself, turning on the television, and stuffing in my ear phones, I had all but forgotten the whiner next to me. The sound muted her complaints, but out of the corner of my eye I could see her panicking to her boyfriend, pointing back wildly to the bathroom. She whipped around and pushed my shoulder. I removed my ear phones.
“…emergency! There’s going to be a problem, I have to get up, I have to get up!” I stood once again, and she shoved by me and ran to the back of the plane like a dyslexic hijacker (“No Ahmed! The FRONT of the plane! THE FRONT!”). I swiveled around to see the attendant in a shouting match with the woman, and after being told once again to come back to her seat, she did. Before sitting, she turned toward the attendant. “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND I HAVE TO GO NOW.” The flight attendant, a sleight woman with an expressionless, makeup-plastered face shot back:
“Ma’am, you’re an adult. You can do what you want. I’m asking you to sit down. If you want to stand up, understand it is your fault if you fall or hurt yourself. Do you understand?”
The woman, panicked and, at this point, sweating, yelled back, “I UNDERSTAND.”
The sense of entitlement was palpable. Readers will note my obsession with people who think they deserve things, even if laws or basic, common rules of society should preclude these people from feeling this way. These people, however, feel that they are special, which is to say they feel the rest of us aren’t. And trust me. These people thought they were special.
Before takeoff, I overheard the woman talking to her parents about her and her boyfriend’s “exquisite” visits to various wineries throughout Napa. And while such visits hardly indicate snobbery, the way she talked about them, as if she’d been to Mecca, did. Bess and I visited two vineyards, and spent most of the time driving through wine country, its spectacle almost more impressive than the wine it produces. I know it sounds unreasonable to consider this behavior alone would have me believe that these two were snobby douches. And it is. But it is merely one part to a larger, meaner sum.
Shortly after the bathroom incident, the woman returned to her seat and continued to complain to her boyfriend. She even leaned over to me and had me remove my ear phones to exclaim, “Can you believe her? I don’t understand, she was the attendant on my flight to San Francisco,” as if they were old friends. “Ugh, I can’t believe these people. Get a f***in life.” No, seriously, she said that.
Her boyfriend opened his laptop when we were told we would be allowed to do so and slid a disc in. “Sideways”. I shit you not, after their trip to Napa, these two decided to watch “Sideways”. I wanted to lean over and say in my best Stewie voice, “OH, delicious! Look at me, look at me… okay, now, which one of you is Paul Giamatti??? OH, it’s YOU, it’s YOOOOU,” while pointing at the woman. And so they spent a little under two hours laughing at the shared hi-jinxes of Thomas Hayden Church and Giamatti, clearly missing the point of the movie. While wine is central to the theme of the story’s plot, the valley itself and the cultivation of the drink which we all eventually imbibe is a metaphor for… whatever, you get it.
Bess and I ordered some food mid-flight, and with our movies on pause, took time to have a small chat, y’know, just, “Hey, how’s your movie,” kind of stuff. I turned back around and Pee Pee Woman was in my face. “We’re going to order something. Do you want anything? We just want to f*** with the waitress.” Waitress? “I swear to God, I’m going to make her life hell.” I thanked her politely and said we’d already ordered food. “No, no, just to mess with her, do you want, like, three diet cokes or something?” I fake laughed and replaced my headphones.
After their meal, they packed up their trash and stuffed it under the seat in front of them. The woman laid her head down on her sheepish boyfriend’s lap, as he scrolled through pictures of their trip to Napa. I didn’t get to look at all of them, but judging from what I saw, these people were alcoholics in wine connoisseurs’ clothing. And they’d been driving the whole time. The best part was they dressed up for it. In most of the pictures, he was wearing a suit and tie, and her, a dress. And it wasn’t like they had an event… they had different outfits for each day they were there. One big week of dress up and drink. (If you ever go to wine country, it’s casual. The tourist industry in and around the area negates a hard standard for dress. I mean, don’t show up in your “Big Johnson” t-shirt if you can help it. But it’s a casual affair.)
And here’s why I’m writing this. Each of these events and the couple’s accompanying behavior, in and of themselves, are little acts of assholery. But the grand finale these two performed at the end of the flight serve as proof that these two were horrible, stupid, selfish people. As we readied descent, the attendants came around asking for trash. The couple ignored them as they walked by, and quickly unpacked their trash from under the seat and either kicked it around or put in the seat pockets in front of them, giggling, as if this sort of thing was going to deliver the vengeance this woman’s bladder so rightly deserved. My mouth hung open as I watched this, embarrassed that I was even in their immediate proximity. I’ve never said it, nor have I found a time to say it appropriately, but this would have been the time to exclaim, “Well, I never!”
I like to think that these two spent a week in Napa celebrating themselves in fancy clothes, getting drunk while pretending they were as good as the company they keep back home. (They seem like the couple who tried Napa because someone bragged about it at a party, and they felt left out.) I also like to think that even though it was fun for them, they will go on living in denial of the fact that while Napa is considered a nice vacation for their cut of society, how they ended it was probably one of the most white trash things they could have done. And that no matter what they do in life, this is the sort of behavior that defines them. Not their material worth, or their professional achievements. No amount of philanthropy will forgive their actions. If these people solved the economic crisis and cured AIDS, they’d still be the assholes from Virgin America Flight 84 to me.
Sorry, had to get that out of my system before talking about how awesome our trip was. I’ll have more up this week, as well as photos.
