Boy, I love misleading titles, don't you?
A while back, I saw Patrick Stewart on TV doing a skit about airline passengers and was reminded of what happened aboard a flight I was on a few years ago.
It was a short hop from Tallahassee to Atlanta. A young lady, girl-next-door, late teens, or early twenties, sat next to me.
A little chit-chat established that this was her first flight and she was a little nervous.
We took off, and she took a paperback book out of her bag and began reading. A couple of sneaky glances at the book made it plain to me that it was a book her parents probably would not want her to read...and was probably "banned in Boston".
As she read, with increasing concentration and attention, to... er... plot and dialog, I suppose, her breathing got a little faster, and a little bit more ragged as we flew on, and she read on.
The stewardess, or female flight attendant for the modern crowd, brought drinks, and the girl took one, but, she barely seemed aware of what was going on around her. She sucked the Coke down and panted her way on through the no-doubt turgid scenes on the pulsating pages of the paperback pulp fiction she was reading.
Just before we began our descent, she, somewhat breathless, came up out of the book and, that pretty-as-a-picture face announced, "I think I'm going to throw up!"
Always the gentleman, and, in fear of being splattered, I rang for the stewardess and dug out the airsick bag for her...just in the nick of time.
I am not sure that was the climax she had expected.
That reminds me of a joke....which I cannot tell here.
Anyway, that's better than "Snakes On A Plane", right?
Donovan Baldwin