The chatters are people who fascinate me. They share details of their lives with people that they will most likely never come across again. And not details of trivial things like favorite tv shows, but of things like birthdays, memories, life plans. It completely baffles me that people are willing to share these intimate details with someone that they have 1) a 1 in I don't know how many chance that they will ever come across again, and 2) let alone remember. Not to mention that I have this complete skepticism of the chatting traveler, who's to know if the business man sitting in the row behind me really flew in from china this morning or if he is a middle school teacher, tired of the day to day and wanting to spice up his boring trip to a teacher conference.
The fake polite people are the ones that will answer questions politely with one word answers then politely put their head down in their book, or slide their headphones into their ears as to say please let me be. But the fake polite people that have taken to the skies as of recently are the flight attendants -now maybe it was just the last flight that I was on, and these woman had been having a rough day... But to me their job is to be helpful, respectful of the passenger, polite (even if it is just a nice considerate fake polite), and other traits of people who work in the service industry. They should not be rude, condescending, and short with the passengers. For example when a mother of two young restless children gets up to take them to the bathroom in the midst of some light turbulence, instead of saying "you're really going to get up now?!" Should say were having some turbulence, do you think they can hold it for a little bit? Or when a passenger holds his hand up to stop a flight attendant to ask a question and starts to say excuse me-they interrupt and say "I'm going to go make an announcement" how did she know what his question was going to be? Now granted she's been up in the sky a lot longer and a lot more than I have but if that gives you the ability to read minds... Sign me up! Now this has not been my experience with all flight attendants- on my short hop over to phoenix we had two characters as our flight attendants- comedians would better describe them. Which is fine by me! Talking to each other over the loud speaker, telling jokes to which passengers would yell out the punch lines making the already short 45 minute flight feel like 5. But once again, maybe this is just their routine to keep them entertained from their numerous flights throughout the day, but to me they encompass the fake polite characteristics, entertaining themselves with the passengers being entertained as an added bonus.
Now the mismatch group contains people like me. The silent travelers. Their either silent because a) they are keeping to them selves and have no interest in what's going on around them- only in their final destination (where ever that may be). They keep their heads down and involve them selves with no one. Choosing rather to bury themselves in their book or magazine, ear phones in, isolating themselves from their fellow travelers. Now to the b's) the people like me, also a silent traveler, but an observer. Watching everything and everyone around us. The traveling world had evolved tremendously in the past years. I've heard the romantic stories of air travel, people dressing up traveling with trunks and fancy luggage. And I know that things have had to change with world events, checking luggage is now not only a convenience but a necessity since air travel has become over priced, but the clothes that people wear while traveling now are ridiculous! I'm the biggest supporter of fuzzy slippers there is, even rocking them to the supermarket- but to the airport? That's overboard, and the sponge bob pajama bottoms? really sir? You're approximately mid 40's, it may be time to get rid of the cartoon character clothing. My favorite thing about airports however, is when something is so captivating- like the woman with the "Rachel" hairdo is discussing her relationship with a man named Jim on her phone, telling him quite loudly that he knew she loved him, that she misses him, that the past few months have been really hard with out him by her side - and that perhaps they can come up with a code when she calls, like call hang up call and hang up again then wait for him to call her back. And in the midst of this situation- you look up and see a fellow creepster people watcher observing the same situation that you are- you catch eyes, and smile a smile that says... Hello fellow watcher, you're watching this situation, I'm watching this situation- let's not judge each other or this situation that's happening before us, have a good trip.
And that's it. Air travel observation from a creepster people watcher.
(please excuse my horrible bb pics, hopefully I'll get better soon at taking non-intrusive creepster observation pics)
