Don't make me come over there

WARNING: I gonna get real up in here and so all my Christian readers may want to cover their ears or look away. I just saying . . .

I was in Alexandria, Va., all week, and just got back today. Had a good time. Ate well, even had a couple of glasses of champagne from the bottle the management at the Hotel Monaco sent up for our wedding anniversary. (Last time I had a drink was about three years ago.) Walked around a lot, shopped, did tourist-y things, took a boat ride on the Potomac River, went to Ben's Chilli Bowl (one of my favorite places in Washington).

Generally slept late because, after a day of just fun, I usually wrote well into the night. So it was a good time all around.

After one last walk around Alexandria today, we left for the airport, Reagan National. When we got to the departure gate, there were people standing around everywhere. The flight was both delayed and over-booked. When asked, we opted to take a later flight, which allowed a young mother from Carmel, Ind., to make the flight home. But in the end, the airline also got us on the flight we were originally scheduled to take. We departed about 45 minutes late.

It took a while to get to the runway because we were following a number of other flights out and authorities were using that same runway for incoming flights from the south that was used for departing flights taking off to the north.

When we were second in line to leave, a Southwest flight landed. And as the US Air flight ahead of us moved onto the runway, a guy on our plane across the aisle from me said, in a voice loud enough for everyone on the plane to hear above the sound of the jet engines, "This fucking airline sucks."

What did he just say? I couldn't believe it.

In this day and age, when people are normally nervous about anything out of the ordinary happening at an airport or on a plane, thinking it could be the prelude to a terrorist attack, this jerk decided to get big and bad and loud. All over a situation which, for the most part, wasn't the airline's fault.

I looked across the aisle and said, "Don't make me come over there and bitch slap your sorry ass and then throw your fat ass out onto the tarmac so we can all get going."

Well, I actually only said that it my head. Aloud, I said nothing. I did what everyone else near him did; stared at him with death beams coming out of our eyes.

I'm a fiction writer, as you know, but some of the best stuff I get is real, such as with this jerk. This situation isn't much but it would be a great part in a short story. The fat guy who gets thrown from the back of a plane. Didn't happen but everyone of the plane probably wished it did. And as a writer, I can make that wish come true.

Man, it's great to be a writer. Because the only limitation is one's imagination.

Now what I should have said . . .

Well, maybe next time. But for now, thanks for reading.