Get off the plane

I thought there was an established etiquette about how to disembark from an airplane. These are the rules I thought were understood:  

Rule 1: We unload from the front of the plane to the back. Each row empties before the next row starts.  

This is slightly unfair as the people in the very front also got to board first. However, as they paid an additional couple hundred dollars to sit in plane seats with slightly more leg room and get free cheap alcohol, I can overlook this class seperation. This rule can be bent for the following subsets:

a) People who are in actual danger of missing their connecting flight. Few things are worse than dashing to your gate to watch your plane taxi away in front of you. These people can get off first. Pretending to have a close connection just to get off sooner is evil. I have faith these people will be punished at some point by actually having a close connection and missing it.  

b) People with screaming children. For goodness sake, let them off the blipping plane. They aren't making it more pleasant for anyone by staying on the plane, and if you had a bladder that small you would scream to go potty too.  

c) Medical emergencies and women who have decided to go into labor on the plane. They win. Always. It cannot be bent because you are in the back of the plane, impatient, and want to scurry off the plane in a sad attempt to 'win' by starting your three hour layover ahead of everyone else. 

Rule 2: Help old people, small people, and people carrying small people with getting luggage down.  

Don't look blankly at the four foot eleven eighty year old woman who is struggling to open the overhead compartment. Help her. Or else you deserve to have items that may have shifted during takeoff and landing fall on your head. Karma, my friend. Enjoy the reverse Samsonite logo tattoo on your forehead.  

Rule 3: If you have luggage stored more than two or three (although three is pushing it) overhead bins behind your seat, you have to wait to get it. You cannot elbow your way back through the crowds. This is only acceptable if you may miss your connection. See Rule 1. I understand it may not be your fault it is so far back. Maybe some other doofuses filled up the bins around you with their winter coats so you had to use one farther away. I understand, but I don't care. Wait.  

Rule 4: When it is your turn, get off the plane.  

This one sounds easy. It is apparently not. Please look for your keys/makeup/cellphone/flask, fix your hair/makeup/nails, and text/email your spouse/lover/friend/archnemesis after your feet have hit the actual airport carpet. Not in the plane aisle and, for heavens sake, not in the jetway as soon as you get off the plane. This makes me (and most everyone behind you) think thoughts that involve bodily harm to your person. I have to then repent of those thoughts. Which makes me angrier at you.  

Those are the main ones. Four rules. Teach your children, your friends, your sister. I'm pleading with you.

Anybody have a match?

DH is reading a handbook for guides right now. Some of the advice is excellent, like how to splint a broken bone or start a fire if you only have wet kindling. Some is less than excellent.

"Honey, how would you get a snapping turtle to let go of your finger?"

"Shoot it," I promptly responded. (P.E.T.A, I know we will never be friends. Let's just face that fact now.) "Why would you have a snapping turtle on the end of your finger anyway? What kind of idiot sticks their hand in a snapping turtle's face?"

"Well, that's not what the guide book says," DH replied.

My interest was piqued. Perhaps there was an excellent way to get a snapping turtle to let go of your finger of which I was unaware. Perhaps P.E.T.A and I could end our long standing feud and share a beer.

"You're supposed to light a match and stick it under its chin. Or you can poke a stick in its nose, but they say that takes too long."

I sat there for a moment and pondered this. First off, a snapping turtle can break a broom handle in half when it bites. I've never been bitten by something that can snap a broom handle in half, but I would wager it hurts. I pictured myself with ten pounds of angry turtle attached to my hand. In that situation, I seriously doubted my ability to calmly pull a match out of my pocket, strike it successfully, and then stick my non-turtle-attached hand next to the angry turtle's chin.

As I was about to comment on this excellent advice, DH spoke up again.

"It also says that if you are attacked by a cougar or bear or lion, you should spit in its mouth. That makes it stop long enough for you to run away. No one can argue with that. If it works, you just saved your life. If it doesn't, you aren't going to be around to write in and contradict them."

I looked at DH.

"P.E.T.A. isn't going to like that."

I wish you hadn't asked me that.

I hate answering questions for people.

Because then other people feel the need to answer the questions too.

And I think the other people are wrong.

And then another murder gets tacked onto my rap sheet.

Which invites more questions.

It's a vicious cycle.