I’m sitting on the plane. Of course, there’s no internet, so I’ll be letting this upload once I’m on terra firma. So far, the only event of note was on earth not in the stratosphere.

The deal with Virgin America is, of course, all modern and shite, what like the kids like. You know, wired. So, I logged in and did the whole online check in thing, printed out my boarding pass and got to the airport. Then, I stood in line where you could allegedly just drop your bag and go. Or, you could stand in line and wait with the non-computer-literate riffraff checking backs the old-fashioned way. Today, they pretty much made everyone stand in line old school.

I got in line behind a woman that I would peg at at least 60, but she had some lines and whatnot that made me think older. She was dressed very Californian casual, no matronly frump, including hip, stylish hippie-ish glasses. But, yeah, clearly not on the young side of the divide. She was jockeying up in the line as a middle-aged guy slid in on the diagonal. I gathered right away they had been doing to who’s next dance for a bit.

The middle-aged guy, south of the woman’s age but not by much, although even tougher to tell, towered over her short stature by about minimally a foot. He was probably over 6-feet and he inched in closer to the line’s front just past her hip. Having none of it, she twisted forward and nudged him back. He pushed back. “Alright,” I’m thinking as I step back a foot, couple of excitable folks eager to get checked in and go.

Generally, I can’t get it up to give that much of a shit in that type of line. I figure, they know when the flights are leaving and have the financial incentive to get our asses on board.

The lady lets me in on her world view, mainly that the guy had muscled his way in the minute they opened a new line and rushed her in the first place. Who the fuck knows.

She turns her back on the alleged muscle-inner, and he makes her move. A solid hip-check to her blind side and she just missed losing the footing beneath her. What the fuck? When did guys of an age certainly old enough to know better throw their weight behind tossing old ladies. He was a standard-issue, middle-class looking dude. Maybe a white-collar job, some kind of college degree, nice watch and shoes and weekend cardigan, you dig. A dad, an uncle, probably born of a mother.

So the woman keeps on her feet and shoves back. There is a mini-shoving match right in front of me, inches away, and I’m just thinking, “What the fuck is wrong with people?” Then it got better.

Enter stage left, the wife. The dude’s wife comes flying up on her broomstick and starts screaming at the woman to keep her hands off her husband, and she makes some sort of dig (in a proper British accent, I might add) about the woman having no sense of decency or courtesy. Then the two woman, seriously, are yelling at each other. The only thing that broke it up was wifey needing to get back into the line she was manning. Apparently, they had split up, she and her husband, to be sure to get the bestestest places in line. (Editorial note, it wasn’t that crowded or that late.)

She scoots back in her line and then goes for the classic shrew stage whisper. The clenched jaw hiss to your spouse (or dog), “Get over here!” with a bit of a petulant foot stamp.

He obeyed.

So for no fucking reason at all, since his wife had pushed them ahead of a whole other line, the guy almost dropped a stranger.

My two cents — I hope I always fucking remember life is short and lines will pass. You know, Serenity Prayer and all that shit.

I also think I chose my partner on the basis of never having to find out what I would do in that situation. I mean, I’ve seen M. pissed off and impatient, but never to the point of physically shoving someone smaller and older (or even contemporary). If that ever did happen, I’d throw him into the back of the car and drive fast to the hospital, because clearly he would be having a brain tumor or aneurysm problem. Anything short of brain damage, and he’d stay cool.

But, if in the hypothetical bizarro universe where I did end up with another man who was that particular kind of dickhead, I can’t imagine defending him. Maybe I’d stand to the side and observe (Jesus, I hope not), but I doubt I’d accuse the other chick of roughing up my big psycho goon.

The visibly shaken older woman got her turn at the counter, and her last words to me were to hope that the lovely couple weren’t sitting next to her on her flight. Thankfully, none of them seem to be on my flight.

Civility is deader than dead, and people are becoming meaner.

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