Small Calamities

Your Calamities

Something in the Air
May 22, 2007 | permalink

I'm back, Gentle Readers. And I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. I had a lot to say about my experience working on the West Coast, but after writing it all out and re-reading it, I realized that most of it was unflattering, at best, to the people I was working with, and out of context it came off as decidedly bitchy (especially, I think, to those of you not 'in the business'), so I decided to forget all that and not say anything at all. Instead, I have an embarrassing story to share with you.

I'm on the plane on the way back to the East Coast. It was getting to be around lunch time, but I refused to pay five dollars for the questionable food items the airline was selling (because you aren't paying enough to be crammed in with your fellow travelers already). But I was hungry, so as a compromise I got a bag of M&Ms to snack on. Not nutritious, and overpriced to be sure, but at least I was sure of what I would be getting.

So there I am, gingerly trying to open the bag so as not to tear it completely apart, when I misjudge. The packaging fails catastrophically, and M&Ms go flying everywhere. I see them arc, in slow motion, and come cascading back down all over me. Oh, and all over the guy next to me. And off of the head of the gentleman in front of me. Yes, Gentle Readers, I was That Guy.

Embarrassed, I try to apologize to them for having bombarded them with candy. The guy in front of me just sort of glares and goes back to his paper. The guy next to me is a lot nicer about it, and good natured-ly helps me pick up the M&Ms from the floor and from in between the seats and (without my help) out of his lap.

Then, still smiling and truly trying to be helpful, he reaches over and drops the candies he has just picked up from the floor and the seats and his lap and drops them in with the few pristine M&Ms that I have left in the remains of the bag. As if it didn't occur to him at all that I might not want to eat the candy he just fished out of his crotch. As if it were the most normal thing in the world.

*sigh*

Needless to say, I didn't eat my M&Ms after all.