Bad Behavior on a Plane....and an Update on the Ultimate Gift

I’m happy to report that there were no TSA moments involved in my airport visits in and out of the Atlanta and Orlando airports last week.  All one needs to do is pay attention to what line you choose at security and pick the line (where you place your items on the belt) that still uses the old fashioned metal detector.  So this summer when I have to go back to the Tulsa, OK airport at which the body scanners have replaced all the regular metal detectors?  Not sure yet what to do.

However, on the flight from Atlanta to Orlando I observed some amazingly rude behavior.  The plane was getting full and I was in my window seat on the plane’s left and people were still boarding.  Down the row comes a mother and her two sons around ages 13 and 8.  The three seats to my right of the aisle were empty at this point and one son asks her if this is where they are sitting and she tells him no, that their seats are in the back.  I continue to read and look out the window.  The next thing I knew I saw the same family of three get into the three seats on my right.  A minute or so later a young woman about age 20 said to the mom of the two boys, “Excuse me, Ma’am?”  And the mom ignored her.  “Excuse me, Ma’am?” again. 

The 20 yr old said, “My boarding pass says that this is my seat.”

The mom: “Well someone was in our seats.”  And looks out her window and totally dismisses the 20 yr old as if it was the end of the conversation.

The 20 yr old said, “Well, it does not matter if I sit in a different seat, but there is the issue that the airline assigned me this seat.”

The mom tells her the same thing (in a rude, dismissive tone again).

At this time the male flight attendant arrives at the row of seats.  It really makes me wonder if the 20 yr old was a man if this same dismissive, rude tone would have been used by the mom.

Flight attendant to mom, “What is your assigned seat?”  Mom tells him that it is row 31 but someone is in those seats.

Flight attendant looks toward the back of plane and of course he knows all the numbers of the rows.

Flight attendant says, “There is no one in those seats and you need to get into your assigned seats.  And you have about 3 minutes.”

Wow.  All I can say is the TSA randomly using the body scanners does not make me feel safer but the presence of some other people on the plane do.  If there are a bunch of men around the cockpit door I feel safe.  Isn’t it male passengers who have thrown recent freaks acting funky to the aisle floor?

This story involves a freak trying to get to pilots the other day and luckily a flight attendant, secret service and police office were there.


This story and this story tells of passengers intervening recently in two separate incidents.

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On the complete flip side of rude, selfish behavior, here is a news clip of the kidney swap done at Emory Hospital a couple weeks ago.  The three healthy men who gave a kidney are doing well and so are three men and boys who received a kidney.  The 7 yr old who lives near us was in fact running around a few days later.  Most of the givers and receivers just happened to be at Emory for their two-week post operation check-up the other day and while in the waiting room they figured out who was who, the journalist and camera operator were called in and this was on the news last night.  Four men and a boy (the other boy was not there at the time) sitting next to each other after the kidney swap.  It seems as though they are bonded for life.