If you are unaware of the latest viral videos of people misbehaving on airplanes, congrats! You have a sense of what matters in life, and have spent your time on more important things, like reading Gibbons account of the Roman Empire, or refilling your toothpick dispenser.
But just to get you up to speed on the inessential outrages du jour, there were two recent videos that sparked zesty discussion on social media:
A man screams at a flight attendant about a screaming baby. He swears 20 times. Verdict of the public: The man was at fault. You cannot reason with a baby, and it is generally not advised to pacify them with a soporific. In the old days they would have dipped a pacifier in laudanum so they didn't disturb other people on the stagecoach, but now everyone just sits and grits.
A man tweets an indignant complaint: His two small children dropped popcorn on the floor of the plane, and the flight attendant is making his pregnant wife pick it up. Granted, that sounds bad; you picture some Ilse, She-Wolf of the Jet Stream, standing over a swollen mom who's on all fours scooping up kernels. "You soil ze plane, you clean ze plane, ja? Schnell! You missed one! Schnell! Ve are beginning ze descent!"
The public had two responses: Why did they give popcorn to children in the first place? And why isn't the husband picking it up?
"Hey, can you help me pick up after Zoe and Chloe? You're the one who bought them popcorn and I'm heavy with child."
"I would, but I'm trying to connect to onboard Wi-Fi to upload this as a TikTok because this is going to be big."
"You know what's also big? Me, with our baby."
"That's good, look angry, it'll make the video better. This is going to go viral and maybe we'll get a free ticket out of it if I tag the airline. You know, if you give birth on the plane under these circumstances, I think the kid has free flights for life. It's, like, the Law of the Air or something."
People make excuses for the rude behavior of some on planes, because the miracle of flight is somehow regarded as an unendurable ordeal. Granted, air travel these days has a series of compounding indignities:
• Boarding, but sitting on the plane for an hour because of an "air traffic situation," as I was told recently. Apparently several dozen large passenger jets just decided to show up unannounced. "Surprise! We were in the neighborhood."
• A shocking abandonment of the "hot towel before landing" tradition on international flights, which is a sign of declining standards that inevitably ends with flight attendants wearing sweatpants and clogs, and saying, "Yeah, whatever" as you deplane instead of "Thank you."
• The inexplicable decision to replace the cutlery with wooden implements, which suggests you're going to have a choice between "gruel" and "vegan gruel." Granted, it's ecologically friendly, but it has the effect of making the chicken taste like dry wood, when of course airplane chicken should taste like wet wood.
You'll never see me on a viral video causing a fuss in the sky, because I am a mature, grown-up man. (Editor's note: Due to making yet another airplane-food joke, columnist privileges have been revoked for the day. He's not taking it well. Video should leak around noon.)
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