Stupid Jerk

I’m somewhere between Chicago and Phoenix and I am sitting in my 10th airline seat in 7 days. I am tired. I am sharing a row with 2 lovely older ladies and I feel all at once guilty and privileged in describing them as such.

Earlier today, while sitting in a booth at Lynn’s Paradise Café in Louisville, KY, my 20 something traveling companion looked at me and said, “I wonder if people think we are mother and son.” Time stops there.

There is an article in the current issue of The New Yorker entitled “My Near Death Experience” in which the author, Paul Simms, recounts his life passing before his eyes as he falls off a “thousand plus foot sheer granite” cliff while taking what he described as a “really long walk.” I feel as though I stepped onto that same said path this morning.

I wish I could tell you that I rose to the occasion with a witty retort. As is so often the case, I have since come up with a litany of snarky comebacks.

“I wonder if people think it’s sad that I have to sit across from a 7 foot idiot with a bad haircut.”

“I doubt it. No one would ever look at me and think I could give birth to something so hideous.”

“Yes, I am sure they are (thinking we are mother and son) and wondering how I ever managed to get through 7th grade while carrying such a huge deformed fetus.”

“Yes and they are praising me for my restraint in not beating the crap out of my insolent offspring.”

Instead I paused as my life passed before my eyes. In my case, I didn’t see visions of myself as a little girl on my banana seat bike, or the faces of lost loved ones. The life I saw was my here and now. I saw my amazing husband and our adorable 10-month-old baby. I saw my fancy new “producer” credit on a network TV show and my spacious town house purchased at just the right time before the housing market went nuts. I saw my well-adjusted friends and their well-adjusted lives and good jobs and wise choices. I saw my ability to weather a storm and recognize a blessing. And then I saw our waitress deliver my plate of Lynn’s infamous Kentucky Bourbon Ball French Toast (as seen on Food Network’s Throwdown with Bobby Flay) and I saw the envy in my young and immature companion’s face as he said “wow that looks good, can I try a bite?”

“Hell no. You can sit there and insult me and in the next breath ask me to share my breakfast. “ And I proceeded to joyously devour the most amazing platter full of breakfast I’ve enjoyed in quite sometime.

Sure, I may be 40. I may be old enough to be someone’s mother. But I am not to old to take my toys and go home when someone is mean to me.

Take that you 26 year old apartment sharing loser with a stupid dog with a predictable name given to her by your ex-girlfriend who left you with the lease to an overpriced downtown loft weeks after talking you into signing a lease. That’s right, no French toast for the formerly fat guy who oozes insecurity from every pore of his nearly 7 foot husky frame and is too stupid to realize that he never has anything to do at work because you are a third, nay, fourth rate “editor” that no one wants to give their tapes to because you can’t tell a story to save your life

No, you may not have any of my breakfast.

Anyway, the flight ended and the 2 lovely ladies deplaned and I staid put for another leg of a really long trip.