Sir Stinks-a-lot and the "I hate you!" kid

It's no secret that I detest flying in an airplane (as opposed to flapping my own wings and flying). The only good part about flying is that it gets you places faster than driving does.

Evan and I spent Christmas in Virginia with my family this year. Of course that meant a 4 hour flight to VA and a 5 hour flight back. The flight to VA wasn't too bad. In fact, I don't really remember much about it. I tried to sleep the entire time. But, the flight back was fraught with turbulence (the thing I hate most about flying...save crashing.) The turbulence got so bad that the pilot came over the speaker and told the flight attendants to take their seats. That's never happened on one of my flights before! Usually you can tell things are ok because the flight attendants are still getting up and bringing people stuff. Nope. Not on this flight. Not on the flight of death.

At one point a flight attendant even scolded a person over the speaker for getting out of their seat! I believe her exact words were, "Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. He has even told the flight attendants to take their seats! And we are the ones who are trained to handle everything that could go wrong on a plane! Everyone should be seated with their seat belt fastened because we are scared out of our minds at what might happen. Do you feel the turbulence?! The wind is so strong it is blowing the plane from side to side! I hope I am freaking you out because I'm freaking out back here! Let me off this plane! Let me off....(muffled sounds, screams)" "I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen for that disruption. Everything is fine. Just take your seats."

Of course at this point I laid my head on my tray table as to hide the fear that was so obviously painted on my face. Evan, as usual, was fine. At each bump I gripped the tray table so hard that I thought I was going to break it. So after an hour of turbulence the ride started to smooth out a bit. Evan and I started to play some games and that distracted me for a while.

That is until I heard a kid one row back yell, "I hate you!" at his mom. Well actually he said, "Why can't I get up?! I want to get up! Everything was fine until you came back here! I hate you!" I told Evan that if I was a flight attendant and heard the little boy yell at his mom I would have said, "Oh do you know what we do with rude little boys? We flush them down the toilet and they fly out the back of the plane? Now, you wouldn't want to be flushed would you? Then stop yelling at your mom!" But because I do not currently have the authority of a flight attendant, I could not say this. So the "I hate you!" kid continued to be rude and rather loud the entire flight. So loud that Sir Stinks-a-lot who was sitting in the row across from us decided to give the "I hate you!" kid a piece of his mind. "I hate you!" kid had gotten up and walked down the aisle. When he came back, he stopped beside Sir Stinks-a-lot and rather loudly said to his mom, "Did he tell you what I said?" Sir Stinks-a-lot was resting so the boy's loud and irritating voice startled him. Sir Stinks-a-lot, in all his stinky glory, said, "I'm going to tell you what I'm going to say in a minute!" "I hate you!" kid was startled and quickly returned to his seat and was never heard from again.

Although Sir Stinks-a-lot did have a bad case of body odor (and let's be honest, who on occasion hasn't?) he did get "I hate you!" kid to settle down.

So the end of the flight was drawing near and all I could think about was how much I wanted to get off the plane and use the bathroom. I kept thinking about how something inside me was going to burst if I didn't get to use the bathroom soon. I tried to convince myself to use the bathroom on the plane, but I kept looking at the people going in and thinking, "I really don't want to go in there after that guy!" I was thankful that I didn't use the bathroom on the plane after we landed because the flight attendant announced that they were having people come in to "service" the restrooms. I don't even want to know how gross they were.

Thus we landed, but of course not without almost slipping off the runway due to the icy conditions in Salt Lake. I found a bathroom with the paper toilet seat covers and was content. That is until we went to claim our luggage and noticed they had 7 flights on one carousel. Why do they do that!?