On The Flight To New Orleans

On The Flight To New Orleans(Aku) NOTE: This story appears online in 'Wikihow' as an example of funny story.
There is no author info given. AKU did not write this story, she has just shared it here for your reading pleasure:


On The Flight To New Orleans

You guys will never believe what happened to me on my flight. You know what a grumpy flier i am, too, so you'll find this super entertaining, i'm sure.

Im sitting on my plane from New York to New Orleans. I have an aisle seat, of course, and im hoping it's not a full flight.

Yeah, right.

It's practically standing room only, and i can feel the plane getting warmer as passengers pack in like sardines. There are few things worse than being trapped in a metal container with 200 of your closest sweaty friends. A splitting headache and a spoiled appetite means i'm about as warm and pleasant as a female anglerfish.

A father walks up the aisle with a kid who looks about 3. I can tell the kid's going to be trouble, because the dad seems to be struggling against a tide of "I don't wanna"s and "You can't make me"s. I look to my left and see the empty seats. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T LET THEM SIT NEXT TO ME. They stop directly in front of my row, and i realize my prayers are going unanswered. just my luck.

I stand up to let them through. He plops his daughter down in the window seat to keep her happy and edges into the middle seat. I do my best to avoid eye contact, but the little girl starts kicking the seat in front of her, and I look at her dad. He gives me a halfhearted “what can you do?”-type of smile, and I turn away. Do not smile at me, sir. I am not in the mood. And I have a feeling the guy in front of your daughter isn’t in the mood either.

I dig out my headphones and jam them into my ears, which I thought was the international signal for “Don’t try to make small talk with me because although these headphones make me seem super interesting, I can’t hear anything you’re saying.” Unfortunately, nobody read this guy in on the rules. I pick up by book and try to find my place, dreading the moment he will inevitably try to converse with me, and then I hear it: “That’s an awfully big book!” I pause, look up, and slowly turn my head to the left. Eyebrows raised, I pointedly remove the right earbud, pause, and say, “What’s that?” with an obviously forced smile.
“Not exactly light reading,” and he gestures toward Anna Karenina.
“No, it’s not. It’s pretty tough, actually...requires a lot of concentration.” I put my earbud back in and turn away.
“Where you headed?”
Oh, yes. Awesome. Super. We’ve got a talker. An oblivious talker. Someone give this guy a megaphone so everyone can hear him talking. No one shall be spared.
“New Orleans,” I say with almost a maniacal smile this time, flicking my head in his direction dramatically, then back down just as quickly—this time without removing my earbuds.
“Oh, I’ve been there!” Now he’s going to proceed to tell me why he was there, who he knows there, what they did there, what they ate, how they were feeling, what shoes he was wearing. Then he’s going to ask why I’m going there. He’s going to be surprised when I tell him I’m from there and ask why I left and how I chose my college and what I studied and what I do now and how I’m liking it and all the polite conversation you’re supposed to make with a plane passenger who does not have headphones in.

“I have to potty!”
My left eye twitches. The kid...I’d almost forgotten about the kid. She wriggles out of her seatbelt and rests her sticky little face on Dad’s shoulder before saying again, this time louder and in his ear (just in case he didn’t hear), “I have to potty!!”
“Ugh, I just took you!” says Dad, unbuckling his seat belt and grabbing hold of her hand. They’re gone for a few peaceful minutes, and I make it about a page before they return. I get up, they file in, Dad orders a beer and an orange juice for the tiny child. I’m thinking I might need something a bit stronger to get through this flight.
What happens next is the truly horrifying part. She sets her sights on the middle seat, and she is going to do anything to get it. She wriggles out of her seatbelt, nearly choking herself in the process, and I can feel her tiny little hands on my leg as she worms her way beneath her father’s tray table. She squeezes herself between her father and myself and climbs up on my lap, staring at her father until he’s forced to take the window seat.
I am paralyzed. You guys know how I feel about children. Dad says nothing of the fact that his offspring has climbed up onto a stranger’s lap. I stare at him bewildered as he moves over, leans on the window, and drinks his beer. Then, the child looks up at me. I look down at her. The exchange lasts forever. Why isn’t she moving? She’s just sitting there. I scoop her up out of my lap—she can’t be more than 30 pounds—and plop her into the middle seat. Dad does nothing, so I buckle her seatbelt, pop in my headphones, and attempt to read.
“Lady, what’cha readin’?”
It speaks...
The tiny girl is staring up at me. I tell her it’s a story about sad Russians. She asks why they’re sad, and I tell her it’s because they don’t like the snow. (I don’t think three-year-olds really understand the concepts of betrayal and political intrigue.) She picks up the plane’s menu and asks what I want. I stare blankly. She repeats the question, pointing to an array of drinks available to order. I point at the soda. She pinches at the glossy page, pretending to pick up the tiny graphic of a bottle, and shoves her tiny thumb and forefinger in my mouth, no doubt pretending to somehow feed me the soda. She extracts her hand and picks up the SkyMall magazine as I stare straight ahead, horrified that the tiny child has just put her grubby, sticky fingers into my mouth.
I think about where those hands have been and what diseases she just passed onto me. I imagine she has some kind of mutated strand of the bubonic plague, to which only she is immune. Great, I’m going to bring about an epidemic caused by a child sticking her hands in my mouth. These are going to be the most embarrassing “Patient Zero” interviews ever. Ugh ugh ugh. I wipe my mouth instinctively.

We finally land, and the lady sitting a row behind me catches my eye and says smiling, “You were so good with her. Not many people have that kind of patience.” I smile and laugh weakly, grab my purse and book it. Next time, I’m bringing a blanket and will just straight-up drape it over my head. No sense trying to pretend I’m normal. Not if the reward is being force-fed imaginary bottles of soda.