Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Flying with Fools and Finding Flames


After making the long-haul trip from St. Louis to New York City this past Sunday, I’ve been prompted to talk little bit about airport norms, expectations, and interpersonal exchanges. First of all, let’s discuss airport security. Seriously though, 9-11 was over a decade ago; since then, we have basically had the same set of transportation regulations. Now I understand that not everyone is a frequent flier and may not be as comfortable with TSA administrators. However, it always amazes me when people are surprised by the rules. For instance, there is always the lady who holds up the line in order to fight with TSA in attempt to keep every one of her Sam’s Club-size shampoos, conditioners, hair spray, lotion, body wash, etc. Like get with the program! Go to Walgreens buy the travel sets and consolidate your essentials. Then we have the people that are shocked when they have to take their shoes off. Word to the wise: wear socks- no one wants to look at your nasty feet, and you just look dirty. Oh and let’s not forget the man who will try to go through the metal detectors with a pocket full of change, set off the alarm, and proceeds to empty them out like a casino slot machine all over the floor- upon which point we will all have to wait while he collects every last cent. Basically, I’m at the point where I can spot you all out. I will not be standing in line behind families with children, old people, or A-holes with water bottles. It’s clear you have no idea what is going on and are only preventing me from making it to my Starbucks coffee waiting on the other side of security. Now that we have that settled and with the help of my best friend whom we will call Kitty, I want to talk about a new phenomenon hitting the dating scene. It’s a little thing I like to refer to as FLY-rting (pronounced flirting, but I like to say fly-arting in order to get the whole ironic effect). Flyrting is what I would define as flirting on a flight; not to be confused with any sort of mile-high club business- this is strictly amateur stuff. With people constantly traveling from city to city or country to country for business and/or pleasure, they are forced to sit and either converse with or ignore the person sitting next to them. For those who choose to take the social route, this is where flyrting takes place. I will use Kitty as a prime example. Coming home from Christmas break, she flew Southwest, and for those of you unfamiliar with the SWA seating arrangements, it is first come, first serve (Ideal for any flyrter). This means that a flyrter can pick out a potential guy or gal they are interested in and “conveniently” sit next to them. This just so happened to be the case for Kitty; a gentleman who we refer to as “Jeff-from-Southwest” found a seat right next to her. It doesn’t take much to strike up a conversation on a plane- just pick any witty one-liner about the fat, stinky chain-smoker a few rows up, and you’ve pretty much sealed the deal for a solid flyrting session to take place. We’ll just say Jeff-from Southwest used some variation of this to get Kitty’s attention. After which time they spent the remainder of the flight chit-chatting about god knows what- but the man got her number so it was definitely a successful flyrting sesh if I’ve ever seen one. Even the cute flight attendant on our last flight got involved in the action. He flyrted with me the whole flight, as he teased me about being trouble maker and hoped the plane didn’t go down because I was sitting in the emergency exit row- which meant certain doom for the whole flight. The moral of the story is that we no longer have to rely on the bar scene to meet people.  Just spend a couple hundred bucks on a flight and the man or woman of your dreams (or if you’re that unlucky the fat smoker) is waiting for you in seat 12A.

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