ONE FREE FLIGHT TO BALANCE MY KARMIC ACCOUNT THANK YOU!

ok i admit i was in karmic credit where domestic air travel was concerned. i'd had an empty seat next to me almost every time i've flown this year. and
every time it happened it was like winning in sports - astonishingly wonderful at the time but you knew in the back of your mind your luck had to run out some time.

this morning i was up at 3:45 to catch the only single flight there was to Durban - that was a shock in itself, and i found myself sitting once again on the aisle with this time two empty seats beside me. i admit i was getting used to this, like that sports star on a winning streak who doesn't expect to lose an easy match.

as i settled in i saw two people approaching from underneath my eyebrows, they were Afrikaans. they weren't speaking or anything but they were both really fat, her hair was in a set and died maroon red. she wore a process magenta pinafore over white pants and her feet swelled out of a pair of white pumps, like pork sausages about to burst in a frying pan. his hair was plastered down in a disciplined side parting. he wore a short sleeved check shirt with beige pants, smart shoes and a pair of glasses only government employees seem to be able lay their hands on. so no, they didn't have to utter a single syllable to give their home language away.

they were in their late 50's to early 60's i would've guessed, so i was struck with great sadness, first for me, but then also for them when i beheld the newborn baby they were carrying with them. what kind of children would hand over a brand spanking, straight-from-the-womb new baby to their aging parents to take on an plane?! well, to answer, that my brother... (oh ja, to save myself we'll call him Mr.Whatsinitforme)... if he was a woman.

so her and the baby took the window seat and he pried himself into the seat next to me with a toy baby doll on his lap.

it was a tight fit.

how tight? you know when you're lying on your back with a coat hanger hooked into your zip, pulling for dear life in the hope you'll still fit into your "thin" jeans, almost passing out from lack of oxygen? i felt like that.

so i dug deep and rose above myself in tolerating the super-brave comments he tried chirping at me in a way that only an Afrikaans man could. ok, having a book to bury my face in helped me a great deal with that.

i also managed scrape a shadow from the bottom of the abyss of my inner-self, took short breaths, and handled the crappy baby-poo smell that was oozing up into my nostrils.

i turned a deaf, ok semi-deaf ear to the sounds of crinkling and crunching as they opened their "padkos" and started to eat. i really hated that because i was de-carbed. how could they eat with that smell? by looks of them however, they might've had a snack tray in their toilet next to the magazines.

anyway, i popped off to the loo (for the third time, if anything to take a few deep breaths in privacy - i didn't want to offend them by getting up into the isle and taking a few steps up to do it, and of course appearing like a deep diver coming up for air to everyone else).

when i returned he was sitting in the window seat with the baby doll, the baby was lying on the seat next to me on the empty seat. i sat down. i did an environment check. yes the baby was indeed lying on the seat alone. i couldn't quite believe my eyes. typical behavior from an Afrikaans male, i thought to myself, can't even hold the baby for five minutes, disgusting. the baby was remarkably well behaved i must say. other than stinking like shit it hadn't made a peep the entire time!

i sensed a presence next to me - funny how you can feel someone without actually physically seeing them, she was back. we all stood up and began to rearrange ourselves. it was like repacking a suitcase while you were inside. but above the unpleasantness of doing this i was overwhelmed by the way this grandmother was manhandling the baby! she hoisted it up off the seat by its arm and tossed it on top of the doll that was resting on her husband's lap, shoe-horned herself into the seat next to me and dragged it across the arm rest back onto her lap! what kind of people WERE these?!

now i had a chance to look into the baby's face, i thought it my moral obligation to check for signs of abuse!

i stared into its pale blue eyes. they were beautiful, but somehow lifeless. lifeless i thought, but i was then forced to correct myself, they were lifeLIKE! this was no baby! it was another doll! i was amazed! i have never seen anything look so human other than in a wax museum. it truely was worth a second stare. however while i was doing this my eyes revolved a bit further toward the 'grandmother'. if this wasn't a real baby then where had the baby poo smell been emanating from all along? my mind reeled. my stomach inverted. i exhaled to black-out point. really, WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE WERE THESE?!

i felt like projectile vomiting onto both of them in an act of revenge. but the plane had begun its descent and we were forced to buckle up. i couldn't see my face but the veins sticking out on my arms well reflected the ones on my forehead i'm sure.

i shuffled my way out of there and into my parent's car.

we went home and i took a cleansing shower. i scrubbed myself the same way they did Meryl Streep in that movie where she'd been exposed to a nuclear power plant meltdown.

now, after recording the event for posterity i am going to do the same thing with this memory and my brain.

and i expect the Universe to credit me with a free flight first class to Bermuda. and pay for all my cocktails.