(I am going on my first international trip and I have a layover at O’Hare airport in Chicago. I’ve never been there before and the airport is MASSIVE. I get off my flight at terminal 2 and see that my next ticket says Gate M12, but I can’t figure out where the M gates are. I ask the first person I can find, who happens to be a TSA agent. )

Me: “Hi! Can you please tell me how to get to the M gates?”

Agent: “Terminal 5.”

(She stares at me, so I start to look around for signs pointing to terminal 5 and see nothing. I look back at her again.) 

Me: “Could you please tell me how to get to terminal 5?”

Agent: *in an extremely condescending tone* “Are you ready to listen or are you going to keep looking around?” 

(Thankfully, her directions were clear, but I have no idea what I did to get so much attitude.)

(My flight is delayed and I am buying some snacks. The cashier has a problem with scanning my candy.)

Me: “I guess I picked the one thing on the shelves that doesn’t scan!”

Cashier: “That’s different. Usually, people say, ‘Oh, it must be free,’ when that happens.”

Me: “Oh, well, I used to be a cashier, and I never did like it when people said that to me.”

Cashier: *pauses and smiles widely* “Thank you for waiting for it to come up in the system. Your total is $[total].”

(I work in an airport shop that sells newspapers — basically, a newsstand. We also sell a lot of things, like snacks and shirts, but not scissors, since they can be classified as weapons. A frantic-looking businessman comes barreling in.)

Frantic Customer: “Give me scissors! HURRY UP.”

Me: “Sorry, sir, we don’t have scissors.”

Frantic Customer: *red-faced* “I’m gonna miss my flight! I’m very important! If you don’t give me some scissors, I will sue you!“

Me: “It’s not a question that I don’t want to give you scissors; it’s that I don’t have any!”

Frantic Customer: “Screw you! Selling these f****** locks that are so hard to f****** open!” *struggles with package*

Me: “Well… uh…”

Frantic Customer: “Now I’m late!” *comes at me with fists raised like he’ll hit me*

(Luckily, an airport security guard came along and stopped him. He flung the lock at me, yelling obscenities. They threw him out and banned him, and I haven’t seen him since!)

(When I am about 15, my mother’s law firm hosts a trip for the partners to go skiing out west. As my mother is unmarried, she has no family to bring except me, her only daughter, so I am invited. This results in the group of us, lawyers, and their families, waiting together to board the same plane between 5:00 and 6:00 am. I bring out a sketchbook to doodle in to keep myself awake, when one of the two named partners — a man in his 50s, and not my mom’s main boss — comes over to see what I am drawing, and, to all appearances, be a nuisance. This man is a known bully, a pain in the a**, and a creep, but there isn’t much my mom can say or do about it at the time. As for me, I am so tired I can barely think, let alone tactfully dodge his attention.)

Partner: “So, you can draw, huh? What else can you draw?”

Me: “Um… I don’t know. Pretty much anything if I can see it, though I like to draw from my head.”

Partner: “Oh, yeah? So, can you draw that plane right there?”

Me: “Yeah. I mean, I could.”

Partner: “Prove it. I want to see you actually draw that plane.”

(I start drawing the plane. I don’t get far, but apparently, he is one of those people who simply cannot wrap their brains around artistic talent at all, so even the most basic stuff astounds him. Rather than prompt him to compliment me, though, this seems to only spur him on to be more obnoxious.)

Partner: “You’re even drawing those little seams and rivets. How did you know to do that?”

Me: “Well, they’re there. I can see them. As I said, I can draw it if I can see it.”

Partner: “Well, what about—”

(We are interrupted by the announcement to begin boarding, and I think that, thankfully, this is the end of it. But somehow, I end up seated next to him on the plane — he in the window seat and my mom in the aisle seat, with me stuck in the middle, the sole object of his focus, for hours. My mom has tried to discourage him a few times, to no avail, and keeps giving me sympathetic looks as he quizzes me.)

Partner: “So, could you draw [random thing]?”

Me: “Probably.”

Partner: “And you can draw things from your head, too? Just, right out of your head?”

Me: “I try.”

Partner: *smugly* “I bet I know something you can’t draw! The United States with all fifty states where they’re supposed to be.”

(I just sigh and begin drawing out the USA with a pen on one of the little airplane cocktail napkins. It’s not photographic, but it’s not half bad, though I get tripped up around Delaware. Regardless, the partner starts huffing and sputtering before I’m finished. He actually seems angry that I could do it — that it was at all possible.)

Partner: *snatching the napkin and trying to show it around* “Do you see this? Do you see what she did?” *turns back to me* “How could you possibly know how to draw that?!”

Me: “I’ve seen a map.”

Partner: *speechless*

(To this day, my mother tells this story with pride, that with that one line I managed to “shut him up so fast!” When he finally spoke again, it was to grumble something I don’t remember, and then he moved seats to a different row to find a new victim. I didn’t speak to him again for the rest of the trip, or ever again afterward. Years later, no one missed him when he left the firm, taking his half of the partners and business with him in an ugly split. Unrelated, but just to drive home what a jerk he was, his final act was to strip the office of every piece of art, decor, and communal furniture that wasn’t nailed down.)

(My husband and I are checking in our one suitcase at the airport. The airline of our flight has multiple “DIY check-in stations” and several employees walking around to assist. The QR code that needs to be scanned is on my husband’s phone. He sticks the phone inside a hole in the station that clearly has some laser-scanning action going on inside, but nothing happens. An employee is already stepping up to help us out as I point out the animation playing on the screen on the station to my husband.)

Me: “You have to point the screen downward to scan, not upward. See?”

Husband: “Ah, d***, and it was so obviously pointed out right in front of me. I feel like an idiot.”

(He flips his phone around and the machine beeps.)

Employee: “Ah, sir, you need to– Oh.”

Me: “Sorry for not paying attention to the animation right away.”

Employee: “I… I have been working here for five years and I have never seen someone pay attention to the animation. You are the first to do it right without any assistance!”

Me: “Wow, that sounds… terribly frustrating. The animation is so obvious!” 

Husband: “Thanks for the assistance, anyway!”

Employee: “You are most welcome!”

(The employee turns around to help out someone else while the machine prints the label we need to stick around the handle of the suitcase. I take it and see that there are directions printed on the backside: instead of peeling off a sheet to make the ends stick together, the label will stick all on its own according to the two drawings. NOTHING on the ends seems sticky but I trust that the drawings are correct, so I stick the label through the handle and press both ends together. By magic, they stick like glue immediately. A second employee steps up to help halfway through my actions.)

Employee #2: “Ma’am, you need to… oh…”

(I have not seen a woman so baffled, impressed, and hopeful for humanity all at once. I cannot help but think that they talked about “this crazy couple that did everything by themselves at the DIY station” at their coffee break!)