Warm nuts?

So I had this passenger. She was gross. She somehow sat in my first class cabin, traveling with her elderly father. I think she belonged in the belly with the animals. I was warned of them by another flight attendant who had them on a previous leg earlier in the day.  They must've been from Appalachia or maybe Utah and here's why...

1. Her drink of choice was red wine mixed with ginger ale over ice. Who does that?

2. She pointedly asked for ice in her father's water...but then when I brought it to him, he said he didn't want ice. I look to her for confirmation but she blames the mistake on her poor, senile dad.  She proceeds to request that I remove each ice cube with a spoon.  I said, "I'll get right on that but it may take me forever."

3. She crawls over her father as she is seated at the window to use the lavatory. I hear her whine, "This is ridiculous!"... Her issue was in the amount of space in her row. We all know that the real issue is with the space she took up. She was sure it was tighter than the row in front of her. I said "No it isn't ma'am. It's all standard and you're in first class which is the roomiest of all. Feel free to measure the row in front of you and get back to me."

4.  She comes out of the bathroom and asks me where the BIGGER bathrooms are on the plane. She was totally serious. And how did I respond?
     "HHHHHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHhahahahahahHAHHHHAHAAAhahahahahahahahaHA!!!"

5. And this is my favorite part.  I serve her a ramekin of warm, mixed nuts about an hour out from landing. She freaks and says she can't have them as she is allergic to peanuts.  I tell her there are no peanuts in the mix so she's safe. She looks at me. She looks at me for a long time. Maybe 5-hour long seconds-ish. Something like that. I break the silence by pointing to each type of nut and I name them very slowly for her....cashew........walnut........almond. See? No peanuts. She says, "So you're saying those aren't peanuts??" ......Ummmmmm nope, they most certainly are not I assure her.  In my head I'm thinking, "Is this conversation seriously happening right now?".  I ask if it's an allergy to all nuts...she says, "No. Peanuts." I'm so confused by the idiocracy of this moron and now other passengers are watching this exchange and listening in on my nut classification lesson. So I say, "Ma'am okay, ALL peanuts are nuts......BUT all nuts are NOT peanuts, make sense?" She looks even more doofus-eyed (probably shouldn't have used an SAT type analogy on this winner) and thus, I retired as a teacher right then and there and said "You know what? Nevermind...."....and just fucking took the damn peanuts out of her sight.

If she was sitting in coach class, I would've understood.

Jumpseat Therapy

The flight attendant jumpseat.  It's the pull-down, ass-flattening, back-breaking "seat" we're required to sit on for take-offs and landings...and it's the most uncomfortable thing my bootay has ever had to meet.  You passengers think you're uncomfortable? There is no reclining for us, no resting of the arms, and the worst part, besides the fact that they are so close to the lavatories that I can smell and hear business being done, yes, the worst part is that I have to share my seat with another, sometimes rather portly FA with no option to switch, even if I wanted to...and most of the time, I really, like really want to. It can be incredibly awkward...or absolutely fascinating.

I think the jumpseat possesses superpowers.  Or more like, spewerpowers. You sit a flight attendant on that thing, and they spew out shit like the BP oil spill. I'm telling you, personal, personal 'I'm trying not to judge you but I totally am' kinda shit. I bet if you Googled "TMI", flight attendants are somewhere in the search results. We joke that it's 'free therapy' and it probably happens because there is safety in anonymity...in knowing that if I'm told you're cheating on your husband with a baggage handler in Dallas or the inner details of your struggles with Irritable Bowel Syndrome on the airplane, I won't give a fuck and I probably won't see you again for a couple of months or even years even if I did give a fuck. So verbal diarrhea ensues a lot on the J/S...I admit to it. Yeah, I've leaked some personal information (still kicking myself for telling blabbermouth Barb how I have all of Hanson's albums on my iPod currently) out of boredom to an almost complete stranger. When you're stuck and there's no one else to talk to but eachother, when you're tired of bitching about the flight at hand and company matters, have eaten all the left-overs, & have read and re-read all the newspapers and magazines we hoard, we tend to spill out our deepest, darkest secrets.  I know some shit ya'll...yes I do, and I think I'm decently good at keeping secrets, but get me on that J/S, and man, I'll tell you all that shit...that I know.

 'MmmBop ba duba dop, ba du bop........'