First, a disclosure. This is in no way a condemnation of the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Truth be told, I have always adhered to the Winston Churchill philosophy, “I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me.”

Yet with that said, why is it that adult human beings often act like clothed deranged monkeys when consuming alcohol? In particular, those who do so while waiting out a delay in their flights by slamming down as many overpriced, oversized, overgenerous airport drinks.

Just the other day, we returned from a trip to Aruba. Delayed leaving Aruba, on arrival in Orlando we learned our connecting flight had been cancelled. Disheartening, yes. Annoying, perhaps. Catastrophic, hardly.

Southwest efficiently moved us to a later flight. This left a 3-hour block of time before boarding. Most people read, some went to get something to eat. Some grumbled and complained (a pointless exercise in futility.)

And one idiot who decided he’d see how much he could drink before the flight.

He was easy to pick out once the flight was announced. Acting like everyone’s friend, extremely proud of his A-list status with Southwest, baseball hat on backwards like a five-year old which was at least 45 years in his past.

Shows the operations agent a boarding pass for the cancelled flight and is very indignant that an A-lister has to demean himself by getting his own updated boarding pass. Now at this point, the ops agent should have stopped him from boarding, but he didn’t. He probably just hoped the joy of boarding would be enough to satisfy this A-list moron.

Wrong.

Once on board after asserting his right to board with the A group, he tossed his carryon in the overhead bin (clearly too big to fit) and assumed his precious aisle seat, five or six rows back.

He was in A-list nirvana. Then, one of the flight crew tried to reposition the bag. Oh, the insult. Oh, the trauma. How dare they touch his bag. Don’t they know he’s a A-lister?
An argument ensues.

A rational voice says. “Hey, why don’t you shut up?”

A-list takes offense. “Who said that?”

“I did,” replies rational voice.

Brief scuffle ensues. A-list does not prevail.

Police arrive. A-list leaves much to the amusement of the other 174 normal human beings.

Why do people act like such fools?

It finally dawned on me. He was born an A-lister.  The a**hole list!  I hope he enjoyed his extended stay in Orlando. There weren’t any other flights to Providence that night. I only wish he could see the smiles of all of us still aboard the plane as we took off.

Or better yet, watched from an Orlando jail cell.