The quickest route from joke to joke is a straight line

A man is walking down a crowded hallway in a public building. He is talking loudly and enthusiastically. He is moving both of his hands in gestures which give added emotion and emphasis to what he is saying. There is no one near enough to be an obvious receiver of his very important monologue. All of this used to mean the guy was not the most emotionally balanced individual in the vicinity. It was also quite likely he would be wearing an elaborate hat made with voluminous amounts of tin foil and a rusty spaghetti strainer in order to block the brain infiltration rays being beamed from the alien mother ship in geosynchronous orbit over these particular longitudinal coordinates. In today’s airports this behavior is seen every few minutes. However, the man doing it is not wearing any Reynolds’s Wrap. He is wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and a Rolex watch. He drives a luxury vehicle and works for a Fortune 500 company. The conversation he is so generously sharing with the general public is being transmitted hundreds of miles through the stratosphere using technology Gene Roddenberry never thought of. The man has a small blinking electronic contraption clipped over his right ear allowing him to have this discussion using something called Bluetooth technology through his cellular phone. This device not only lets him talk to his executive assistant back in San Francisco about the intricate merger financing which needs to be completed by close of business today but it also makes the beaming of brain infiltration rays from the alien mother ship in geosynchronous orbit over the particular longitudinal coordinates of Dulles International Airport much more effective.
Recently I took a trip to the Washington D.C. area because of my real job. (Believe it or not I am not able to support my family writing a semi-weekly column for the local newspaper.) It had been a while since I had traveled any way other than in a car with my kids in the back and my wife riding shotgun. (She actually has a shotgun encouraging the children to refrain from bickering as we roll through the Kansas terrain.) The businessmen carrying on wireless conversations oblivious to the dozens of people around them was just one of the things I found odd upon my return to travel.
Since I taught literature to middle school age students I always thought I had lived the role of the “Least-paid-attention-to-speaker” in the world. Have you ever tried to point out the humor of the verbal repartee between Benedick and Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to seventh graders? Every pair of eyes in the room goes into screen saver mode. Well, I found someone who is ignored even more: the flight attendant as s/he explains the safety information before take-off. As valuable as I think Shakespeare is the information given by the flight attendant may be more important. Granted it is only important if things go horribly wrong, but it is stuff you will want to know under particular circumstances.
If there was an emergency landing on water and the bozo in seat 22B, fumbling for the safety instructions card in the seat back pocket, called out to ask: “What am I supposed to use for a floatation device again?” I wouldn’t blame the flight attendant if s/he replied: “You, sir, will just have to use the carry on bag which you did not properly stow in the overhead compartment. By the way that plastic bag and yellow cup which just dropped from the ceiling is just to keep the little bag of peanuts you stole from the guy sleeping in seat 22A nice and fresh.”
One of the biggest things I noticed on this trip had to do with the difference between fancy hotels and cheap, but not sleazy, hotels. Most of my previous travels involved staying at hotels with a number as a part of their name. This time I was put up at a spot with a much higher standard of living. It is better to stay at the cheaper ones.
Each little service had some sort of fee. I was surprised the shampoo wasn’t included in the minibar fridge amongst the five dollar cans of pop. I had the distinct idea that if I asked the desk clerk where the free continental breakfast was served she would have had an attack of vertigo looking down her nose at me. The Aryan beauty at the desk spoke with some sort of impossible to identify European accent. This helped her maintain superiority over the hick wearing his University of Kansas hoodie asking directions to the nearest McDonald’s. I bet if you ran into her away from work she’d sound like Ellie Mae Clampett.