These days, when you fly Ryanair, you more or less know what you’re in for. You find an attractive fare online and you leap for it.

If you’re nimble enough to avoid the 120,103 attempts to nickel and dime you – a seat, a seat near a bathroom, a seat away from assholes, insurance, insurance from assholes, equipment, early-check-in, fast track, bigger bag on the plane, bigger bag on the plane and a checked bag, just your wallet, money back if the plane doesn’t come – well then you get yourself a cheapish ticket.

You’re excited that you’ve gotten a ticket that didn’t bankrupt you, but you can’t help but notice all the language being directly straight at you. You don’t have a larger upper-head cabin bag for your vast and covetous belongings. No, no. You’ve chosen to cram your thirdhand undies and loveless T-shirts into a SMALL BAG that must fit under the seat in front of you where your feet will rest on it.  

Today, I walk through the airport with my SMALL BAG. We have just been awarded a gate along with ten other flights, so we are all walking and sweating because Stansted Airport hates that it has to give you air for free, so it tries to limit that resource as much as is possible. 

At the gate, the niceties end the second the Ryanair staff member realizes you are non-priority. It’s easy to discern the PRIORITIES from the NONPRIORITIES because the PRIORITIES meander down a single 30-foot-long corridor sectioned off by probably 4 queue barriers. The NONPRIORITIES walk the same 30-feet but to get there they must walk through 400 queue barriers made into a labyrinth maze that ends in two minotaurs. Forget that it’s Halloween.

One of these minotaurs angrily scans the passes of the PRIORITIES (even they don’t get smiles). One lovely 19-year-old female NONPRIORITY accidentally got into the PRIORITY lane and when she was discovered they cast her out. She whimpered back to our side with her SMALL BAG. The other minotaur orders us NONPRIORITIES to measure our bags into a box the size of Jiminy Cricket’s pencil case. If your bag doesn’t fit, the minotaurs are legally allowed to call you a ninny and then dance because they will be able to charge you 75 GBP which will really upset you, but at least you’ll be able to put it above your head now.

After we NONPRIORITIES are called forth to measure our bags, we come back breathing hard and sweating. But being a NONPRIORITY has pulled us together, so we cheer each other on with encouragement. I hand over my ticket with a shaky hand. Minotaur One looks at it:

NONPRIORITY PASSENGER SMALL BAG ONLY

and passes it back as if nothing on Earth could have bored her more.

I walk down some steps into what I think is going to be the gate, but we end up just outside on the tarmac at an airplane. And the PRIORITIES waiting at some foldable steps at the base of it. You could tell the PRIORITIES were a bit depressed at their special moment being over, since we were now forced to intermix on the same airplane.

I sit down at 10A. A woman sits next to me. I say next to me, what I mean is she became part of my right flank by osmosis because there are three seats on each side and they afford you about three millimeters of space. So when you sneeze, you and the person in front of you become one. I think I’ve seen a horror movie about that recently.

I recognize the female next to me as a fellow NONPRIORITY and say to her:

“Boy, they cut out all the majesty of flying, haven’t they? Used to be a little different.”

“Yeah, true,” she says. “But one thing you got to give them, they never cancel.”

And there you have it: the bottom line.

Anyway, I want all of you to know that you’re a priority in my life.