The Scariest Little Flight Attendant

For all of Stanley Bing's columns on TheStreet.com, click here.

It's been a little while since I talked about the horrors of contemporary air travel. Either I've become so desensitized to the situation or it's gotten better in the last year or so, I don't know. Either way, my head hasn't flown off my shoulders in quite some time. Which made my experience of JetBlue (JBLU) the other day all the more rich and surprising.

I'll just tell it to you as it happened. You can judge whether I'm overreacting. I do sometimes.

My wife and I were in the exit row of the 5:59 JetBlue flight out of JFK to San Francisco. Because I love her, I took the middle seat and she had the aisle. The flight was on time. Everything was moving very smoothly. The general air of JetBlue jolly, democratic collegiality prevailed.

All our bags were neatly stowed. I had placed my wife's wheely bag, which is perfectly sized to go into the overhead compartment wheels first, and my backpack, which contained my beloved MacBook, up there, and neatly inserted her folded topcoat and my favorite sport jacket on top of our stuff.

As always, there is always one butthead who appears just as the doors are closing and requires immediate assistance for seating and stowage. Indeed, here he came, and with him, following close by, a very neat, very tidy, very trim gate agent with the passenger's wheely bag in tow.

The late arrival went back to his seat in the rear of the plane. The flight attendant began to look for an overhead compartment to put his bag. He selected ours, which was already rather full not only with our possessions but those of several others.