It's All In Who You're Compared To

Riding on the plane home from LA Sunday night, there was a woman two rows behind me who, I kid you not, talked the ENTIRE three and a half hours. And didn't talk in a low indoor voice, but talked in one of those, "I'm answering my cell phone in public and I want everyone around me to hear how important I am that people call me even when I'm out shopping" voices.

She was a playwright and a yoga enthusiast and was going on and on about the relationship between energy and creativity. The men she was sitting with seemed to be fans of hers, and every now and then, when she'd take a breath, they'd murmur in awed appreciation of her pontifcations, not caring that she hadn't allowed them to interject one word.

I was seated in a row with a cute older couple who were holding hands and partaking of $10 plastic airplane cups of red wine throughout the flight. They talked quietly to each other throughout the trip, but towards the end of the flight the man was getting fed up. Every few minutes he'd mock the yoga lady by repeating in a loud pompous voice something she'd just said. His wife would smack him on the arm and laugh.

Finally, as we landed, he turned to his wife and said, "Wow, she even makes you seem like a monk who's taken a vow of silence!!"