The Fight

Ted watched the people flock onto the plane like sheep being guided into a pen. He couldn't understand their behaviour, their flagrant disregard for rules. Why did flying turning ordinarily polite people into animals? He knew that most of the people in the queue were not seated in rows 15 to 27 so why had they not remained seated as requested? He could see that most of them had more than one piece of hand luggage and that was bigger than permitted but people had no shame. Why were there queue jumpers and pushers? There was a real ‘well if he’s getting away with it so am I’ mentality. They pushed and harried and for what? To get on the plane quicker, but they'd all reach their final destination at the same time. Getting off was usually even worse. Ted liked it when he knew they'd be a bus waiting for them. People would still get up as soon as the seatbelt signs were off, then push to get off the plane as quickly as possible only to sit in a freezing bus while the stragglers like Ted made their way leisurely off the aircraft.

But today was crazy even by normal standards. Ted looked around but he couldn’t see one smile. There was something in the air and it wasn't magic. Ted felt that something small could be magnified into something serious and so it proved. Ted watched the whole event unfold with a calm distance.

The man with the stick obviously had anger issues; his face said don't mess with me, his body seemed to have expanded to fill his place in the queue, while his whole demeanour yelled ‘thou shalt not pass’.

Meanwhile, the couple behind were obviously annoyed at how slowly the stick man was moving. While he was looking for his ID card, the skinny middle-aged woman's patience ran out and she tried to push passed him to reach the check-in attendant. Not wanting to be overtaken stick man used his stick to trip the woman. Angry words were exchanged in two different languages, but then stick man must have said something the woman understood because suddenly all hell broke loose. The woman threw the first one but punches flew in from all directions. The woman and her husband set upon stick man with ferocity and what looked like delight. Despite his age and his stick, stick man gave as good as he got, his arms windmilling catching anyone in range. The rest of the queue scattered, anyone thinking of trying to break it up was deterred by the sheer bloody violence of the fight. Even the police, when they arrived, looked unsure of what to do. Ted wondered what those already on the plane would be thinking, stranded on a half boarded plane not knowing what they were missing back in the departure lounge. Finally the security people got to grips with the fighters and dragged their bloodied tired bodies away. Ted surveyed the scene, there was blood on the floor and on the windows, medics were treating a check-in guy who’d taken a blow to the head and an elderly lady who’d fainted, strangers were chatting to each other and comforting each other. Relieved smiles, half jokes and even hugs.  Funny he thought how it took something so horrifying to make the other passengers behave like humans again.