The Mean Lady
I am the mean lady on the airplane -- the one I have so many times noticed and frowned upon in my head. That lady is now me. And, it is mean lady, not mean woman; that is a whole different category. And, it is not a mean lady; no, I am the mean lady on the airplane.
I flew to Montana on Thursday, June 7th. I had agreed to show a rough cut of my film, "Commit to the Line" as part of the Helena Dirt Divas Clinic. It was the first time I have shown my film to anyone outside my own inner group -- people who know me. I was nervous, but not only was I nervous about showing the film, I had all kinds of additional anxiety prior to leaving on Thursday. The short list : I was directing the sponsor roll-ins and the Kathleen Turner Retrospective for the Provincetown Film Festival. The best part is that we did not get to interview Ms. Turner until Tuesday, May 29th and we need to deliver the piece by Monday, June 11th (the day that I return from this Montana trip).
So, of course, I am going crazy trying to supervise the edit on KT and do some initial finish work on my film for the screening. The audio has not been mixed or normalized, there is no sound track, we have not color corrected; I was somewhat lamely trying to normalize the audio and put a temp track on it before buring a DVD.
I stayed up all night on Tuesday, working on trying to get the levels right on the audio, and then went to work for an unbearable amount of time on Wednesday. Of course, there was an important lunch meeting that I could not miss on Wednesday. I glued my eyelids open and made it through lunch. Then, I took off for my studio to get to work on adding the temp music track. I am not entirely sure why this took me all night, but it did. Once I finished burning three copies of the DVD (just in case) at about 4:30am, I jetted home and tried not to fall asleep on the floor as I packed my suitcase to catch my 8am flight to Bozeman, MT.
This may be surprising, but flying, and traveling in general, is a source of anxiety for me. My way of mitigating this discomfort is to try to control as much of the process as possible. I have claustrophobia and so I absolutely must sit in an aisle seat on an airplane. I know, where am I going to go? It is not rational, it just is. Northwest Airlines has this new way of squeezing money out of passengers by offering "preferred" seating 24 hours before the flight leaves for a nominal fee ($15-20). "Preferred" means aisle, exit row and rows with more legroom. Of course, I am always on the website 24 hours ahead to get the best seats. On the first leg of my Montana trip, I purchased "preferred" seat 19D -- close to the front of the plane (another anxiety mitigator), an aisle seat with a bit more legroom.
I arrived at the airport about an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave and managed to stay awake until the boarding call was announced. I got on the plane and was incredibly relieved to sit in my aisle seat with extra leg room. There was a man seated in the window seat. I made a silent plea that no one be seated in the middle seat. I just wanted to sleep. Ah, but alas, it was not to be; instead two parents with about 25 kids come bouncing down the aisle. I see the father eyeing the middle seat of my row; my thoughts of rest and quiet were shattered. And, then, the ultimate confrontation: "excuse me ma'am, are you traveling alone?"
Argh. So what if I am. "Yes," I responded.
"Would you mind trading this aisle seat for another aisle seat so that we (meaning he and his son) can sit together?" He asked in his best, I am more important than you because I have a child and any reasonable, responsible, caring human being would do this, voice.
I was half asleep and totally irritated. Why did they not plan accordingly? They have a huge family and, of course, they would want to sit together, but they can spend their time on the internet finding appropriate seats just as easily as I. Ever the wimp, however, I responded, "uhhh, where's the seat." He says something like row 100. Well, there's my out. "That's too far back for me."
But, it does not end there. The woman in the aisle seat in front of me stands up and looks at me disgustedly, "would you move to this seat? I'll move to the back."
I stand up briefly and start to concede, but then I look at her seat, notice the smaller amount of leg room and become absolutely infuriated. "You know what," I said, "I paid extra for this seat because it has more leg room. I'm not moving."
The woman looked at me as if I were a monster. A gasp arose from the entire airplane. A whisper cumulated in the air "can you believe the mean lady would not change seats so that family could sit together; I just can't believe that."
I felt bad for a while, then mad, then bad, then I became unconscious and when I regained consciousness, the plane was landing and the mom was sitting beside me. When I conked out, the little boy was in the seat. I wondered how much climbing over me had occured. And, then I started worrying about the mean looks that people were going to give me as I deplaned. I kept my eyes down. I am the mean lady who really wishes to avoid confrontation with strangers.
One last thing : I know that I was perceived as the mean lady, but is it not odd or maybe even ironic that the father first whispered to his son (loud enough for me to hear), "we can ask that man if he will change seats." The "man" to which they were referring was seated in the window seat in my row. But, then dad says, "or we could ask that lady." And, they proceeded with plan B. Why is it easier to ask a woman, er Lady, to inconvenience herself? Why not ask the man? They never did. Instead, I just got to be the mean lady who would not change her seat so that this poor family could sit together.