Tube of talking sardines

Ann Althouse joins those who are soooo busy and soooo hurried they will be making that all important cell phone call from the airplane. Whatever sense of personal space we have left will be violated by this nusiance. I and my fellow sardines will be trapped, trapped, while listneing to inane conversations spoken too loudly to not only overcome the usual cell phone static, but the roar of the airplane.

Silence fans expect everyone else to shut up.

Yes, yes I do, especially when I'm trying like hell to sleep on the plane with the white noise of the engines blocking out any thoughts of how uncomfortable I am squeezed into a tiny seat stolen from the kiddie airplane at Camp Snoopy with little air and the person next to me panicking because she's afraid to fly. Just add a screaming small child, United Airlines parking on the runway for two hours, missing my connection for no reason, incomprehensible instructions from the cockpit on where my connecting flight gate has been changed to, and I guarantee my three or four martinis will give way to a caffeine deprived crankiness that will cause me to crush the cell phone with my bare hands. That's right, I will be the passenger who asks the well-dressed federal air marshall for his gun so I can shoot the goober giving his girlfriend "back home" a travelogue every five minutes. "Yup, it looks like we're going over some clouds now, and then I see another group of farm fields."

You just know I will be next to some idiot who is talking to his doctor in a loud voice, "YEAH, BUT WHAT I NEED TO KNOW IS WHETHER OR NOT IT'S CONTAGIOUS. YEAH, YOU'RE BREAKING UP. WE'RE GOING OVER SOME MOUNTAINS NOW. I'LL CALL YOU AFTER WE LAND."