The Joys of Airplane Travel

THE LAST SALAD

Right now I am sitting in the airport in Atlanta, waiting for my flight to Quito. I just ate a salad, my last for the next five months (I am not supposed to eat raw veggies in Quito because they will retain microbes from the local water after they are washed). The salad was really delicious. It had red peppers, and green peppers, and olives, and feta cheese, and onions, and tomatoes, and yummy dressing. I think that I will have to make myself salads and wash the ingredients with bottled or boiled water while I am in Quito (granted the former sounds disgustingly bourgeois).


GRUMPY OLD WOMEN

I am sitting at the gate, next to several grumpy old people.* Representing the Americans: ¨Lorna,¨ a confused woman who belongs in a tour group. She keeps on asking stupid questions in her ¨outside¨ voice, and just tried to board the plane two hours early. Representing the Ecuadorians, ¨Magda,¨ whose favorite hobbies include identifying gringos and gringas whose very existence annoy here, and complaining about them to her husband. Even though Lorna has a stronger voice, I am convinced that Magda would win in a fight.


I´LL GIVE YOU MY KIDNEY IF YOU GIVE ME A NEW SEATMATE

The women next to me was nuts. She asked me to help her fill out her customs and immigration forms because she was illiterate.** I read the questions from the form to her, verbatim. Instead of giving me her address or telling me whether or not she had visited a farm in the U.S., she kept on mumbling a list of the members of her family. Halfway through, she announced that she could not handle answering the questions anymore and pretended that she only spoke Quechua.

As the flight progressed, Nutso continued to get on my nerves. She decided that her elbows were entitled to the entire row, causing great discomfort on my part. At the end of the flight, passengers streamed into the aisles and waited, like sardines, for the door of the plane to be opened. Nutso could not wait. She forced her way into the packed aisle by ramming into my body, and proceeded to remove her suitcase from the overhead compartment. Nutso´s suitcase landed in the middle of a clump of people, separated from her by my body. Even though no one was moving (the plane was still closed), Nutso decided that she had to get to the front. She started pulling on her suitcase (neglecting to ask me to move my shins). When her suitcase would not move, she pulled harder. I ultimately had to mount the back of a row of seats and lie on top of them. I felt a little bit like Roberto Benigni at the Academy Awards, minus the jovial dance.


*To be clear, I do not think that all older people are grumpy. I know many cheerful senior citizens.
**To be clear, I did not think that she was nuts because she was illiterate.