Please Stop the Profanity

I recently traveled to Florida to visit my family and celebrate my sister’s birthday. It was an entirely delightful visit until just about the last moment: on the flight home. The flight attendant announced that our flight was fully booked and that every seat would be occupied. A completely packed plane is never pleasant. But, surprisingly, the middle seat between me and a young woman in the window seat remained unoccupied. I was thinking that I had really lucked out—an empty seat next to me on a supposedly full flight. My good fortune held for another five minutes until a straggling passenger came charging down the aisle to the middle seat next to me.

My middle seat mate settled in and promptly announced in a loud voice that he had missed his f—ing flight from Miami and had to f—ing drive all the way to Tampa to fly to f—ing Philly. He then took out his phone and began calling whomever to repeat his tale of travel woes. That is when the f-word really began to fly. And he was on speaker phone the whole time. It also did not concern him that we, passengers, had been told to turn off our cell phones or place them in airplane mode. He persisted with his string of vulgarity bemoaning how he had missed his previous flight. Finally, he put his phone away and blessedly dozed off for a while. 

No one said anything to him while he spouted one f-word after another, including the people on the other end of his calls. They actually were using it also, and there were clearly children in the background of the call. Not one person within earshot of him on the flight said a word. I certainly did not, I am sorry to report. Parents of children near our row said nothing. No one did. I suppose we are all so accustomed to hearing foul language these days that we just ignore it.