We Are A Society Of Fools Who Have Lost The Will To Be Considerate Of One Another

I'm sitting in the Atlanta Airport delayed by an hour, so I've had a drink and a few extra moments.

Or maybe the other way around. We were late getting here because of one a-hole who thought he was more important than a planeload of other humanoids his evolutionary equals.

Buffoon-man is late getting on the plane for who knows why? It's a small airport--they call his name a million times... yet there we sit... waiting for the Sultan of Row 29. He bounds onboard--carrying his partially-eaten fast-food to-go plate... books and bags spilling everywhere--and the biggest hard-sided carry-on you've ever seen. The reason you've never seen a carry-on this big is because when they make them the same size as a casket, they're called "Checked" bags. Yet here we are watching the Master of Space and Time, mostly Space, try to cram his casket into an overhead bin.

We all know it's not going to fit. The flight attendant knows, the woman who he spilled his noodles on knows, the guy who is unfortunately sitting under the overhead bin knows, although at the moment he's trying not to come in contact with a hairy exposed belly of the over-reaching, over-stuffing bin stuffer. His shirt is riding north with every strain of his overhead push.

The groans are starting towards the back. "Check it for chrissakes," was one of the nicer ones... But alas! He manages somehow to shape shift this thing and slam the bin closed on the third try.

The Stuffin-man then collects his mess, goes to row 29 and buckles in. Well, in all this excitement, he neglected a tiny length of strap which is now hanging below the latched door of the overhead compartment. I guess a hanging strap is better than, say, an arm of a guy or something. Well, when the airline baggage guy comes aboard (probably called to assist after ten minutes of the staff watching this guy destroy a cargo bin.) He sees the strap, and decides to do what every Baggage Guy was born to do: Tuck that strap in! So he pops the latch, and holy crap the avalanche of personal items comes flooding down on top of the Baggage Guy. Also on the flight attendant, and the guy who looks like the Captain, but clearly is lower on the pecking order, to the passengers already seated with their safety belts properly latched. Everyone.

Baggage Guy will not be deterred. He collects all the fallen debris, re-assigns it to various other overheads, and then sets to closing the the overhead that caused all the trouble in the first place with the errant strap. we are at least 10 minutes behind schedule... maybe more, as he is now slamming this door. Well, it closes, but instead of the secure "Click" we all wait to hear, we hear a dead, "Thud" and the door swings back upward. The spring is shot. The door won't close. The flight will either have to be delayed long enough to fix the overhead door latch, or we will have to disembark and be re-flighted to a later flight. What? I have a connecting flight that is perilously scheduled, and any delay at my origination will naturally, make me miss it. Me and everyone else on this flight who has a similar story.

I am just beginning to hate this gear crammer, when the Baggage Guy says, "Ooh, It clicked..." after trying one last time. Like a safe-cracker in the nick of time...he stops away slowly, cautioning us all to, "Not touch it." Sounds good to me--and every other pissed off passenger. So in the middle of my hate, I stall--now I pity this guy--and all of society he represents. Why can't we just take a breath, and say, "Maybe I'm not more important than ALL these other people. Maybe, I'm just the SAME amount of important. And I can then take that knowledge and apply it like everyone else has, and rather than delay a flight, I can just board it, like everyone else. Follow a rule, my man.

Can I tell you how hard it was for everyone behind him when we unloaded at Atlanta--The whole freking plane waiting for him to dislodge his overhead item...because he was too important to wait for the properly functioning passengers to exit. Nope, up he goes, creating a human road block fighting with a suitcase that gave him so much trouble going in, was now quite comfortable NOT coming out...

I laughed, though--because I was seated in row 20...well ahead of the log jam! Unfortunately, my connecting was delayed an hour and 15 minutes anyway...