Rantiquette's Rule of Air Travel the First

I tend to hate crowds, which means I tend to hate air travel. I think it’s the American life experience with the most people squeezed into the smallest amount of space, with smallest amount of comfort, and no compensating utility to make up for it. (Standing in front of the stage at a Jonas Brothers show might be equally, if not more uncomfortable and crowded if it weren’t for the measure after measure of pure rock genius emanating from their vocal and guitar chords.)

Naturally there are many factors of air travel that could be made far more tolerable with the observation of what should be obvious etiquette. So here it goes, Rantiquette’s rule of air travel the first: Do not stand up and congregate anywhere near the gate until your row is called. Your seat is reserved! Why the hell are you so eager to get to your airplane seat anyway, with the 17.5 inches of legroom, and the negative seven inches of shoulder room? (Why is Shaq flying coach anyway?) If anything you should wait until everyone else has boarded and they start calling you name on the loud speaker. The seats at the gate are infinitely more comfortable and once you’re on board you can’t go back to McDonald’s and get that $8 McFlurry out of which you talked yourself. (You're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition.)

Nevertheless, when the gate lady announces that it’s time to start pre-boarding, she might as well say, “Dudes, Megan Fox is on board itching to go a mile high, if you know what I mean, and she said anyone will do. Ladies, it has been officially revealed that the vampire Edward Cullen is actually real. Until now he’s been pretending to be the actor Robert Pattinson. He’s on board, (has no interest in that skank Megan Fox) and would like nothing more than to whisper sweet nothings into your ear for the duration of the flight.” So 200 red-faced morons, immediately run up to the gate to ask the gate lady if their row has been called yet. Apparently, in the language of morons, the words “Your row is not yet being boarded, please wait in the seating area until your row is called,” translates to “Please back up two steps, into the person behind you, so that just in case I go directly from talking to you over to the PA and announce that your row is now ready to board then you get to be first in line.”!

I realize that many of you may be extremely excited and eager to get in there as quickly as possible and show off the fact that you know how to buckle your seatbelt without having seen the corresponding demonstration. But please remember that they don’t do the spiel until after everyone is seated and the cabin door is closed. You’ve got plenty of time to show everyone your skillz.