Heidi in Real Life

My recent series-of - unusual-actual events during a flight inspired the following concepts . Aren’t we all sick of listening to flight attendants flatly demonstrating stuff we already know while on board a flight? Don’t we all get it by now? Aren’t there things you’d rather know?  Scenario 1: You sit by a stranger and immediately open your reading material, using the polite, “Don’t talk to me, I’m busy” etiquette. The man next to you starts talking... non-stop . You fantasize, as he drones, about pretending you’re deaf, mute and/or blind. You wish you’d packed Limburger Cheese in your purse, to take out and gnaw on and use big “H” words like, “HOOOOOOOWW did you manage that?” or “HOOOOWWDY, pardner” in his direction. You turn your head towards him with a glazed, drooping eyelid, dopey-look, yet nothing deters the barrage of verbiage. You’re forced to listen and unwillingly communicate, when all you want to do is read...your....BOOK! Flight Attendant In...

One of my birthday gifts this year was a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to get my new driver's license. Despite it being a people watcher’s paradise, full of citizens large and small, Spanish, deaf or Amish (who have to register their buggies), I dread it. I know I’m in for one of those awful , fun-house, nose-growing, eyebrow-uniting wretched pictures again.   I have a long history of awful license pictures, beginning with my first sweaty picture at age 16. I was so self-conscious about it that, months later, I cut it in half and paid for a replacement. Another Heidi ‘gem’ was when I was photographed saying the “W” in the word “Wait!” But my personal favorite--the one where I looked like a female impersonator, I managed to keep for what seemed like decades, thanks to years of mail-in-renewal privilege. Generations of bad driver’s license photos exist in my family and friend's wallets too. There was: ET- the Extraterrestrial - made famous by...