I am starting a legal fund for myself just in case I’m incarcerated in the future.  I want to warn you all, friends and family, that should I be stuck on a plane on a tarmac for over three hours, I will likely be arrested.  Of course I am referring to the people stuck (again) on the Jet Blue plane for seven hours.

I joke, of course.  Sort of.  I just don’t know if my temperament could handle such an ordeal.   There are several things that really bother me about this whole scene.  First, the moms with babies.  Under the best of circumstances, it is overwhelmingly difficult to travel with small children and babies.  I am the person on the plane who makes a point of smiling and cooing to the mother with little ones when I am on a plane, especially if I am seated near them.   I think one smile makes up for the fifty dirty looks a woman gets for having the audacity to take her child to see Grandma and Grandpa.  I know of what I speak, having lived in California since my honeymoon, with family back in Illinois.

I’ll never forget the dude sitting next to me who gave me dirty looks because Joe was 18 months and pretty much wanted to sleep with his head in the aisle – and in no other position – which required me to try to reason with him, corral him, and required him to whine and cry and challenge my maternal authority.  Did I mention he was 18 months old?  Joe, not the jerk sitting next to me.  The Jerk also read his journal while his wife, seated just across the aisle from him, dealt with three children, one a toddler and one a baby.   In that instance, I almost relished the fact that my son was being a pain in the ass. Stuck on a tarmac in that situation for seven hours?  I don’t think so.  I would have probably been encouraging Joe to crawl on the guy and smiling like St. Patience at my out of control child, but I digress.

What really kills me  is that when the pilot finally said they needed police out there because it was getting serious, VOILA! Police and ambulance arrived right away.   This was clearly another case of rules, laws, bureaucracy, idiocracy out of control.   What kind of person in charge at the airport does not look at the situation, realize that it is unnecessary and inhumane, experience empathy and say “rules be damned, I am going to make an independent decision and get a team out there to get these people off the plane.”  A spineless coward or an idiot, that’s what kind of person.

It’s a pretty scary culture in which people are afraid to make an independent call because they are afraid of the consequences or, worse, can’t think beyond their job description.  We see it all the time now in stores – it used to be that a clerk at a department store could make a customer service decision.  Now they have to talk to their supervisor who is powerless and will refer it to the appropriate department and you will hear from them….well, never.

I flew from ORD to SFO yesterday.  This is fresh in my mind, thus my rant.  Please send all donations for my legal fund to….