Old Man Drunk

Oh lovely Colorado.

Went there last weekend with the Husband to visit my folks. The trip was, for the most part, what anyone might expect from a four day weekend with one's parents. I won't bore all of you with details from that.

I'll just bore you with details from other aspects of our trip.

We got to the airport in good ol' Sac town and discovered that United, being the delightfully charming and oh-so customer savvy airline that they are, had decided to book us in seats 10 rows apart.

Oh, and it doesn't stop there. Naturally, we each got a middle seat.

Yea United!

Both of us tucked away into our seats, my husbands knees (I safely assumed) wedged nicely against the kidneys of the passenger in front of him. I pulled out my iPod and tried to tune out as much as possible. (for the record I was not trying to be witty with that little "tune out" remark but afterwards I realized it might look that way and I wouldn't want any of you to think that I was campy in a grandpa sort of way. I mean I AM, but there's no reason to dwell. Sort of like what I'm doing here. Dwelling. Look at me dwell. Dwell dwell dwell.)

I quickly noticed, as I was "tuning out" that the old man next to me seemed a little odd. But he was old. Old sort of predisposes us for oddness. I mean, "old" and "odd" are practically the same word.

First of all he was wearing a suit. Which isn't all that odd really considering that there used to be a time when everyone dressed nicely for flights. As I thought this my eyes darted to the girl in 18D with her cloud pajama pants, gut hanging out of a skin-tight shirt that read "Hot Mamacita", and little fuzzy slippers.

But the thing that struck me as odd was that his hands looked CHEWED on, complete with 4 bandaids on varying fingers. That and he seemed very protective of his jacket which he had already taken off and was clutching to his lap.

Soon I found out why.

Turns out his jacket wasn't a jacket at all. It was in fact a bar. A bar that apparently only served whiskey and brandy.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted him fishing around in his jacket pocket. Then he - oh so stealthily - pulled out a one-shot bottle of whiskey, screwed off the top, and downed it in one gulp. All while gripping the bottle in his hand so that no one would know what he was doing.

Uh huh.

I had NO idea what he was doing. No siree.

One bottle of whiskey down and I start analyzing the situation.

Me: Do we have a nervous flier here?

Me again: Well, not necessarily - hell, if I had thought to stock up on shots of Maker's Mark I'd be doing the same thing right now.

Me: Maybe he's an alcoholic?

Me again: Given that comment I just made about Maker's Mark that would mean WE'RE an alcoholic. Split personality syndrome yes - but alcoholic?

At this point in time I felt there was not enough conclusive evidence to diagnose the man a nervous flier. Instead I imagined that he was someone who appreciated whiskey. All the time. Or, perhaps he thought it was 10:30 at night rather than being 10:30 in the morning like it was.

And then out came another shot.

Of course, since he is so stealth-like, it just looked like he was twisting one hand over the other (like he had a pepper grinder in his hands, or perhaps, gee, like he was opening a tiny bottle), and then lifted his fist to his mouth and tipped his head back (sort of like he, oh I don't know, was maybe drinking something from a small bottle ensconced in his hand?).

Whiskey shot count: 2

Right about now we started taxiing out to the runway which was, in my opinion, the moment of truth. Were we dealing with a nervous flier here?

Bingo.

Out came another shot.

And by the time we made it out to the runway and began final preparations for lift-off - another shot.

Whiskey shot count: 4

He probably would have had another shot during actual lift-off but he was old, frail, and probably couldn't manage to both drink and be inconspicuous about it. So instead he clung to the armwrests and pressed his eyes shut.

We finally leveled out and before the seatbelt light went off...can you guess?

Whiskey shot count: 5

So now my little buddy has got 5 shots in him, having offered NONE to me I might add, and seems to be pretty tame. I wasn't too concerned that he would be a mean drunk, he seemed too small and squirrelly to be mean. To the point, he just seemed like the product of years of taking abuse from a really mean bitch of a wife.

But what I didn't see coming was the horror of all horrors. Something I could never have predicted being that it was so, well, UNPREDICTABLE.

Into his pocket he reached, and out he pulled a pair of nail clippers.

Yes, nail clippers.

And then he proceeded to, yes, clip his nails.

His thick, peeling, yellowing nails. And oh boy, I'd agree they needed a good trimming.

But there?

On the plane?

With ME right NEXT to him?

Let me just make this perfectly clear. I don't particularly think cutting one's nails is gross or disgusting. It's just practicing good grooming, which BELIEVE me - I totally like. Good grooming skills are important.

But I believe there is a time and place for everything. And clipping your nails on a plane when you are in close proximity to over 100 people is not what I would consider the correct "place" for this "thing". When a nail might SHOOT off at a high velocity and stab a very nice girl, who was JUST trying to mind her own business, in the CORNEA.

And it's making that CLIPPING noise. The one that everyone recognizes as a nail clipping noise. And I'm looking around and seeing that people are slowly noticing the sound.

CLIP!

Looking up from their books, stopping their conversations...

CLIP! CLIP!

Turning their heads to try and see what UNCOUTH MORON is clipping his NAILS on a plane!

CLIP!

And all I could think about was how I did NOT want a nail lodged in my eye ball. How I would have to go to the doctor and get eyedrops like I did when my cat scratched my eye (totally another story) and how eyedrops suck because I completely suck at putting them in. How the term "putting them in" is really a creative exageration on my part unless you consider drooling eyedrops all over my cheeks as getting them in my eye. And how when I succeed at getting ANY of the solution in it just burns and makes me tear up.

And finally he finished.

By this point I was ready to TAKE his whiskey from him and should he try to fight me I'd give him one of those *stop right there and no one gets hurt* kind of looks I'm sure his wife gives him all the time.

But the stewardess came to take our drink orders. And gosh, what do you think he ordered? A beer. And then he called the stewardess back to get a glass of milk as well. Milk? MILK?

Oh no.

I'd heard of this before. But I'd never actually seen it done. He took the milk, fished a tiny bottle of brandy out of his pocket, and spiked his milk with the liquor. Why milk? Why on God's green earth milk?

He cracked open another bottle of whiskey, threw that one back.

By the end of snack hour=
Whiskey shot count: 6
Brandy shot count: 1
Beer: 1
Milk: 1

The rest of the flight was as you can imagine...it was only a 2 hour flight so we were preparing for landing not that long after our drinks. The fingernail clipping bastard downed another shot before the seatbelt lights went back on. Chugged another one right before our final decent.

We finally landed and I was thankful that I had managed to avoid getting a fingernail lodged in my eye. Something I'm always thankful for after landing. Really.

And then I notice in my periphery that he is, yet again, drinking more whiskey. And I'm wondering just how MANY bottles he can fit in that magical jacket of his? And why doesn't he just get a fucking FLASK? An IV perhaps? And since he had so many why didn't he offer any to me? Hmm? Rude.

And then he starts talking to me. Mind you we have exchanged no words up to this point. 2 hours next to each other and the only words I hear come out of the man's mouth are "I'll have a beer" and "could I have a glass of milk too?".

But apparently us having landed has relaxed him a bit, so he decides to makes friends with me.

Sigh.

Drunk Bastard: My connecting flight is out on Concourse C

Me: Really (smiling in a leave-me-alone sort of way)

Drunk Bastard: Oh yea, I've made this flight a number of times and it's always out in Concourse C. Yup. Always is.

(clearly you never get USED to flying)

Drunk Bastard: Normally I have at least an hour to get there. But today I only have 30 minutes.

(fascinating)

Drunk Bastard: I even asked the person on the phone when I booked the flight "normally I have over an hour - why do I only get 30 minutes this time?"

(I'm sure it was a personal affront on his part to annoy the piss out of you...)

Drunk Bastard: He said he wasn't sure.

(Ok, seriously, we've been sitting here for like 5 hours - how hard is it to open the FUCKING PLANE DOOR?)

Drunk Bastard: So I guess I'll just have to rush and hopefully I'll still make the flight.

(is he going to have enough booze to last through his next flight? Holy cow - how many more bottles does he have IN that jacket?)

And then the door finally opened and we all deplaned. All of us happy to be out of our seats. Some of us a little groggy, others a little buzzed, and one of us with shorter fingernails.

Final Shot count: 10