{"id":555,"date":"2011-12-22T14:41:15","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T13:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=555"},"modified":"2012-11-04T22:59:40","modified_gmt":"2012-11-04T21:59:40","slug":"the-departure-lounge-that-darwin-forgot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=555","title":{"rendered":"The Departure Lounge that Darwin Forgot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"punch\"<\/a>” Hey Mabel!” The voice that ricochets\u00a0through departure lounge Z21 is a peculiar loud one. Every set\u00a0of eyes\u00a0has turned toward the source of the clatter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Except,\u00a0evidently, for Mabel.<\/p>\n

“Mabel! Where are my cigarettes?”<\/p>\n

Everyone now waits with an expectant ear to learn about the whereabouts of the man’s tobacco. A moment later, from the other side of the lounge, the answer comes in a loud, whining moan that plaints something about fanny packs\u00a0and very\u00a0personal medical creams.<\/p>\n

The man, Mervis, answers by releasing a loud\u00a0burp into the already muggy lounge air. And at the exact same time, every set of butt cheeks in Z21\u00a0clinch. Mabel approaches me and I feel a true fear climb down my skin. She pulls my jacket from the seat next to mine, drops it to the floor\u00a0and\u00a0slams her enormous, pink-sweatpants-clad ass on it with a thump that elicited a dozen prayers for an inanimate object.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I pick up my jacket and\u00a0glare at my foe.\u00a0OK, Mabel, this is war. \u00a0<\/p>\n

I love the Christmas season, but my sociopathic tendencies whilst travelling via air are well-documented.\u00a0My friends know about it, I have written in this blog about it and I am fairly certain that the FBI has a “this guy hasn’t done anything bad, but we don’t like the way he eats his air-snack so beware’ file on me.<\/p>\n

This unpleasant tendency\u00a0climbs to\u00a0its peak\u00a0during the\u00a0preflight hours spent\u00a0in airports with my fellow travellers. While I am willing to admit that much of this is my issue, people in airports are not the same as people in day-to-day life. For some reason, the word ‘airport’\u00a0means that\u00a0people are now given licence to\u00a0be rude, pushy and self-centered.<\/p>\n

They devolve into a more primitive form. And Mabel and Mervis\u00a0are a perfect example of this devolution. In the forty minutes we spend with them,\u00a0Mervis tells everyone within earshot that he needs to go smoke but that they need to get in line first because they “have a lot of stuff.” Mabel spills\u00a0the entire contents of her purse onto the floor, which was picked up by the idiot writing this blog and two other guys. When we manage to recover her belongings, she doesn’t reply with the common “thank you” but with the less common “where the fuck is my lighter?”<\/p>\n

We learn that he has to apply his very personal cream in a very private\u00a0place before the flight.\u00a0This knowledge procures my second prayer of the day concerning the seating arrangement of Mervis and Myself. Fortunately, someone was listening.<\/p>\n

The flight goes without incident until we prepare for landing\u00a0in Philadelphia\u00a0and are informed\u00a0that we will\u00a0have to undertake\u00a0one of\u00a0flying’s most joyous rituals – the holding pattern. Adding to this joy is that we are holding in the middle of a pancake stack of cumulus clouds that are\u00a0 making the flight less than relaxing.<\/p>\n

After an hour, the pilot finally informs us that we are Okayed for landing, and Mabel celebrates the news by getting out of her seat and going to the bathroom. The attendant shouts for her to sit down, but Mabel ignores it. While\u00a0Mabel urinates,\u00a0the pilot informs us that if someone isn’t in their seat, they will have to discontinue the landing.<\/p>\n

This garners less than happy comments from the\u00a0250 other passengers who’ve been on a plane for ten hours and in a holding pattern for one hour. Needless to say, when Mabel comes out of the bathroom she is told by about 200 (pleasant) voices to get to her pink ass in her seat. She complies.<\/p>\n

My Christmas mood reappears when we touch down safely. It strengthens when I get my bag and meet my parents and fortifies to a glorious degree when I am presented my first cheesesteak in six months. By the\u00a0time my brother arrives to bring me to\u00a0The Horne (our local pub)\u00a0I am the Saint Nick of Langhorne.<\/p>\n

Still, the knowledge\u00a0that Mabel\u00a0and Mervis are\u00a0celebrating the holidays with private creams and cigarettes does little to settle\u00a0the stomach.<\/p>\n

NB: Names\u00a0have been changed to protect the devolved\u00a0from scientific experiments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

” Hey Mabel!” The voice that ricochets\u00a0through departure lounge Z21 is a peculiar loud one. Every set\u00a0of eyes\u00a0has turned toward the source of the clatter.\u00a0 Except,\u00a0evidently, for Mabel. “Mabel! Where are my cigarettes?” Everyone now waits with an expectant ear to learn about the whereabouts of the man’s tobacco. A moment later, from the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-8X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1065,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/1065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}