I just completed a 9 and a half hour flight from Melbourne to Honolulu on Jetstar’s 787 Dreamliner. Great modern plane, plenty of personal space and a very quiet ride… except for Danielle.
Danielle was the morbidly rotund girl sitting in the row behind me conducting a loud and animated conversation with her unfortunate co-traveller (not sure if the companion was previously known to Danielle or was just an unfortunate victim of circumstance). I initially thought Danielle was talking to someone who was hearing impaired because there could be no other reason for her to be speaking so loud.
I’ve never understood people who conduct public conversations as if they are the only people in the room – and as if the person they are talking to is clear on the other side of a very large room!
This verbal assault on everyone within a ten-passenger radius began even before the plane had pushed back from the terminal. I thought that a) she’ll shut her fat trap soon, and b) my noise cancelling headphones will cancel Danielle.
Wrong on both counts.
Her mouth was all-conquering and the inane prattle that came out of it went on for the entire flight, even when she was stuffing it with food. This girl can multi-task. I could track Danielle’s monologuing even over the movie soundtracks coming through my Bose headphones (damn you Bose).
To add to the pain, Danielle’s mum and dad (no doubt putting to use years of experience) were sitting separate from Danielle in the ROW IN FRONT OF ME. When Danielle wasn’t haranguing her neighbour she was calling out to mum to ask if she wanted a refreshing grapefruit face wipe or asking if she should have the muffin or the banana bread – so much easier than using that new-fangled in-seat messaging system on all the seat-back screens.
This continued long after the lights went down and most of the plane was trying to sleep. Over the course of the flight I got to know Danielle a lot better than I ever really wanted to. I know where she works, I know what she had for lunch yesterday, I know her Asian boss’s name, I know her favourite foods (she has a lot of favourite foods), I know that she didn’t like the broccoli in her in-flight meal which is funny because she normally likes broccoli so she’s not sure what they did to this broccoli, I know that she doesn’t eat bread (surprising), I know her favourite TV shows, movies and personalities and perhaps most disturbingly I now know her bra size.
As if this wasn’t aggravation enough, each time she got up to go to the bathroom she would thrust her generously proportioned lower torso into my personal space as she reached to get her backpack from the overhead locker, and then proceed to bash it into people left and right as she lolloped down the passageway.
I had a strong urge to KILL Danielle and feed a small Polynesian island for a year.