CHIVALRY IS DEAD

And Merry Christmas to you too!

On my way home from Burbank California, my wife and I had a 4-hour layover in Salt Lake City due to Delta Airlines changing our flight we booked for earlier in the day to one that got us into NYC and JFK at 11:30 at night. On top of all that it was not until 1:30 AM that we put the key into our front door. Delta Airlines sucks! I will never use them again.

As we sat in the large terminal waiting for our flight, there was a flight scheduled to take off just minutes ahead of ours, and that boarding door was diagonal to our boarding door. The two crowds of people mixed with each other while the Delta staff for both flights spoke at the same time, offering confusion to all. It is also a stupid airline.

But the one thing that bothered me the most was the attitude of the passengers in the terminal. Some piled suitcases upon suitcases on seats, some spread their legs out far in front of them and some never even looked up, buried into their I-phones like mental midgets lost in some deep trance.

Amidst this overwhelming crowd, a lady was carrying a baby by herself. The baby was under a year old, maybe at the most 6-months, and Mamma was frantically looking for a place to sit. Next to me was a brain-dead young man, under 30 who stretched out stared into his cell-phone, others pretended they didn’t see her or didn’t care that she was in some kind of distress, looking down, into phones, or just watching from their seats. Finally, an old guy got up from his seat and ran to the woman to offer his seat to her and her child, which she gratefully took, asking if the old guy was sure he wanted to give up his comfort. The old man assured her it was OK, and so she sat, where she breastfed her child.

I wanted to smack everyone around me, especially that punk kid with an attitude that said I don’t give a damned about some mother and her kid. What kind of people have we become? There were a lot of young guys sitting and talking and having a great time while this poor woman struggled to deal with traveling alone with a young child. Everyone in that damned terminal should have been looking out for her, not themselves! We have become selfish and inconsiderate people and that is very sad. Just look at the highways and how we drive, tail-gaiting, passing on the right shoulder just to get ahead. Supermarkets are filled with people taking things out of packages and helping themselves or leaving frozen goods they seceded they didn’t want anymore and putting them where the products would thaw and be thrown out.

If you are wondering why I didn’t give up my seat to the young mother and child, I was the old man!