Why aren’t people saying anything?
They have to be about to lose their mind. I know I am, but you know what, I’m going to let someone else take control of this situation. I’m not even going to give the person the evil eye even though I so very desperately want to do not just the evilest of eyes, but shout at the top of my lungs, “Hey, idiot. Stop it!”
That’s it. I can’t do this. I’m just not that person who can meekly look down at their laptop or phone and pretend that the very thing that is going on is not going on. I even did the timer thing. You know when you tell yourself that if something is still happening in 10 minutes then that’s the sign that you defiantly need to do something. Well, I just hit the 10-minute mark. Jesus, take the wheel, I’m going in.
Okay, that did not go as well as I hoped. I think I needed back up.
I say yellversation because even with noise-canceling headphones on I could hear this dude like a preacher at a tent revival. Even after I changed seats and crossed over to the Gate 3 seating area, his voice was still an auditory triumph in vocal projection.
Can’t you see now how I had to say something? It was my duty to the traveling public. Never mind that when I went over and suggested very kindly and using my best Southern accent, (I was in Dallas, after all) with an overlay of cotillion etiquette that he 1) take his phone off speaker and 2) modulate his tone that all I got for my effort was that he talked even louder … a feat that I didn’t think was possible.
If you’re rolling your eyes right now and thinking, “Ugh, this lady is complaining about people at airports again.” All I have to say is, “Yes I am, because when you witness behavior this egregious, it demands being called out via any means necessary. And hang on, because my story gets worse, and here it is.
To escape the phone screamer, I decided to chill out in the ladies room. Surely I won’t be able to hear him in there what with the toilets flushing and hand dryers. As I was walking to the bathroom I noticed I was headed in the same direction as a woman who I had earlier nicknamed the hand sanitizer queen of Big D. (What? You don’t give random strangers nicknames?)
About 30 minutes earlier, when I was sitting at a table adjacent from her at the Whataburger inside the airport, she pulled out a Clorox wipe and cleaned off her table and then got out four little bottles of hand sanitizers and went to town on her arms.
I’m talking the woman scrubbed from fingertips to elbows. Is she planning on doing surgery or eating her Whataburger double with cheese? Now, I realize she could have a compromised immune system and needs to be very careful about germs so I, in the spirit of being a good co-human, took out my buy three-get-one free Bath and Bodyworks Cherry Berry Burst hand sanitizer and also did the elbow to fingertips routine.
It turns out we are both going to the ladies room and the line is, of course, long.
So, it ends up that I go into the same stall she has just vacated and I’m immediately grossed out. This woman has peed all over the seat. Ugh, she’s one of those. The “I won’t sit on the toilet seat because it has germs, but I’ll squat and tinkle everywhere” woman. Is there anything more of a middle finger to the world than the germaphobe that in their quest to remain bacteria-free has no care or regard for the rest of humanity’s needs?
I immediately relocated to another stall and before I can begin to meditate about the human stew that is air travel, I hear something. Oh no, it can’t be. Yep, the yellversation guy’s voice is permeating the walls of the ladies room.
The only thing that could be worse is if the yeller and the tinkler are both on my fight. And, of course, they were.
Snarky in the Suburbs 