I Can Hardly Handle How Classy I Am.

Just when I thought I was a pro at this airplane business.

 

I’m sitting in row 15, on the aisle.  I’m seated with Rita and Naomi, two animated, Italian sisters who have so far spent a lot of time talking about a computer game they want to invent to help people learn to clean their homes.  To keep things tidy.  I’m listening closely, hoping to absorb some of these tips.

And just then, I wonder where my iPhone is.  Rita and Naomi are so kind and talkative, and now I would like to listen to something else.  Namely, the playlist called Purchased.

I couldn’t find my phone.  I did the typical searching – my purse, the seatback pocket, my purse again, the floor directly beneath me, and then I knelt in the aisle to look around on the floor around me.

And this was my fatal mistake, since I was now in other people’s line of sight.

“What are you looking for?”

“Did you lose something, honey?”

“I can’t find my phone.”

“Oh, dear!  I’d be panicking!”

“Well, I’m okay right now.  We have some time before the flight lands, and I know it’s here somewhere.”  I sent a video to my boys before we left, before the sun was up.  So I know that I know this silly extension of me is somewhere nearby.

I have a friend who has named her phone “Identity.”  So in situations like this, she can legitimately say, “Oh, no.  I’ve lost my Identity.”  Sadly accurate.

Questions continued around me.

“What did she lose?”

“She lost her iPhone.”

“What does it look like?”

“Red with white polka dots.”

The handsome man across the aisle, no wedding ring, says, “Ma’am, I can stick around after the flight to help you find it.”

“Thank you.”

“Does it have a slick case?  That it could have slid back a few rows?”

“Yes.”

 

And now everyone in the surrounding six rows is looking for my Identity.

 

Naomi said, “Have you looked in your purse?”

Well, of course I have.  Again and again.  Thoroughly.

She moves to the aisle so I can have her seat to unload my bag yet again, just to prove to everyone that it’s not there.

Except there it was.  In my bag.  I raised one finger to Naomi.  I whispered discreetly, “I found it.”

 

“Oh good!  Oh, good.  She found it!”

“She found it?”

“Yes!  It was in her bag.”

“In her purse?”

“Yes.  She found it.”

“Oh, she found it!”

 

Good grief.

 

While we’re all up on account of me anyway, I decided to slip to the lavatory.  (I think it’s funny that this seems to be the only place where we call it ‘the lavatory.’  On a plane, it’s not a restroom.  It’s the lavatory.)

 

As I finished, exited the lavatory, and closed the door behind me, I closed my scarf in the door.

 

Oh, wow.  Um, excuse me.  Excuse – excuse me.  I’ll just – there we go.

 

Good grief.  Honestly.  Sometimes I impress myself so much I can hardly stand it.