I’m Not Petty…Usually. A Travel Snippet

Rachel and I were in the Lisbon Airport for a flight to Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel Island in The Azores. We’d spent five days with Libby in Porto, then a three or so days in Sintra, just the two of us.

Earlier that morning we took an Uber to a luggage storage location in Lisbon I’d found. Luggage-free, we explored for a bit before heading to the airport for our evening flight.

It had been a very long day by the time we went to a check in kiosk and were told by the machine that there was some issue with our ticket. I had bought our flight through TAP Air, a Portuguese airline. We found an employee and they informed us that SATA Air would now be flying that leg. And it was currently delayed two hours.

Cool.

We made our way to the SATA Air check in to find no one there aside from a friendly, elderly Portuguese couple who, in their limited English (zero judgement, I’m just painting a picture), told us this is where we should check in.

We figured out we had about an hour to kill, so we wandered off to find someplace to relax. When we returned later there was a small group behind the couple waiting “in line”. A SATA air employee approached and told us that we needed to sign up “here”. At which point, he pointed at a not-yet-opened opening to a section separated by ropes. You know, the ones that have you snaking in a line to the check in?

This starting spot was about thirty feet away from where the kind elderly couple had been waiting for hours for service. I went over to let them know that the start of the line had moved, so they moved too, along with the small crowd that had gathered. Rachel and I made sure the elderly couple kept their first-in-line spot.

When the path to this line opened the elderly couple snaked their way through it. We were about six people behind them. We got to where the line would start and you’d wait for your turn to see an attendant, and discovered a woman in maybe her fifties standing their with her roughly twelve year old daughter.

We figured out that when these two discovered the line would be taking a different route, they simply went under a rope to be first in line, cutting everyone including the nice elderly couple.

I was pissed at the audacity and Rachel and I quickly decided that she was probably the brattiest twelve year old who ever lived. I very much wanted to chastise the mother for not only being rude for cutting an elderly couple who had been there far longer than she had, but for also teaching her daughter that being inconsiderate was a perfectly fine thing to do.

Knowing that I was just asking for the awkwardness of being later seated next to them on the plane, I said nothing.

The elderly couple spotted us about six people behind them and gestured to us, offering “backsies”. (A childhood term for when you let your friends cut but actually you offer them the spot behind you).

We thanked them but assured them with facial expressions and hand gestures that we were fine in the spot we stood at. A spot where we comfortably judged people around us.

Rachel and I checked our bags and headed to security where lots of other people were making their way through. Along with those lots of others were two tall, rather large brothers with their teeny tiny Portuguese mother. She wore a very long skirt, and a scarf wrapped around her head which tied at the back. She moved very slowly and carefully and was clearly on in her years. She had a wonderful, tiny face, and one of her sons’ faces was a large carbon copy of her own.

As we got up to the security belt, I did my routine of taking off my pump and putting it with my other devices in a ziplock bag to be checked by hand. My panic rose in me while I tried to get the agents to understand that the devices couldn’t go through the machines. The minute they understood they were medical devices, there was clarity and they were on board. I could breathe again.

But as I stood there and waited for them to get organized, I sensed someone behind me. When I turned I saw the elderly woman and her carbon-copy son standing very close behind me, both wearing an expression which to me read that they’d been caught in the act.

It was clear to me the son was quietly chastising his mother in Portuguese, and I immediately put together what was happening; I was wearing a t-shirt, which meant my continuous glucose monitor was plainly visible where it was attached on the back of my arm.

I was confident by the body language of the two and tone of the son’s voice, that the elderly woman must have been reaching up to touch my device on the back of my arm, and that I had turned just as the son had just stopped her from doing so.

Witnessing her childlike curiosity tickled me, and I got such a kick out of the human “interaction”. And I can still see her sweet, curious face in my mind.

What is that thing? I must touch it!

(I think?) hours later, we were about thirty people back in a very huge group lining up to have our tickets checked before boarding. One line sign read “priority” and the other was for the rest of us. We were in the bottle-necking line for the non-fancies, and watched as the nice elderly couple from earlier in the evening made their way to priority. Oddly they were sent away to join the normal people line, as was the bratty twelve year old and her moral-less mother. (Apparently the mother daughter duo felt they were priority material).

Wanting to return their kindness from earlier, Rachel and I immediately waved the elderly couple over, gesturing for them to please join us in line rather than be forced to go all the way to the back. As they joined us, Rachel and I pretended to not notice the twelve year old looking wistfully in our direction, expecting to also be invited to cut.

I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit that we took far more delight than we should have in NOT inviting the mom and daughter to join us in line. And I’m only slightly embarrassed that we continued to feel very pleased that they ended up SO far back in line that we never saw them again.

Well, OK, I’m not that embarrassed. It’s called Karma, folks. And they had it coming.