The joy of being content

Whenever I travel, I usually just sit back and relax because I know that from the point where I step into an airport, until when I leave, my fate is out of my hands. I leave it to the TSA, the airlines, the weather and whatever else can get thrown at me. Tere is no use in getting bent out of shape when things do not go perfectly. This always works in my favor because I don’t get too stressed out and I just take things as they come.
This behavior really paid off on a recent trip. I was on a flight from Austin to Durham, North Carolina. My flight stopped in Dallas and the continued on to Durham. I was not paying attention when we landed. If I had been paying attention I would have heard the announcement saying that we were changing plans. I was sitting on the plane with about 5 other people who also, were not paying attention. The flight attendant got on the PA and once again told us to leave the plane and head to gate A11. We were at gate A9 so it was not a big deal. Well, it was a big deal for one guy. No sooner had the flight attendant finished making the announcement and this guy starts complaining about having to change planes. He started accusing the airlines of underselling a flight and wanting to cram us all on another flight. He was bad-mouthing the whole airline industry. He was a very up-tight person. He bitched and moaned all the way to gate A-11. When we got there he started getting a little louder. He made a point of letting everyone know that we were “kicked off” a flight and forced onto this plane. “I probably lost my window seat too” he bellowed. He got me to thinking that I might need to check and see if my seat assignment was still intact. I got in line behind Mr. Blowhard and waited to see if my seat had changed. The whole time we were standing in line, this guy kept going on and on about the inconvenience of it all. While we standing there, a pilot was standing up at the desk, listening to this guy. The pilot just stood there observing it all. After a little while, the pilot came up to me and whispered in my ear, “You have the same seat assignment, you don’t have to wait in line”.

With that news, I stepped out of line, leaving Mr. Blowhard standing in line. The Pilot gave me a wink and smiled as he looked at Mr. Blowhard. Sometimes it pays to take it easy.