As you already know, people in airports are dumb. Again, I think it must be some freak combination of a higher-stress situation, people not being in control of what they are allowed to do, and a forced interaction with the general population that brings out the very dumbest in people in airports and on airplanes. Today I would like to talk about how people who disobey the seatbelt sign on airplanes are dumb.

There are two different types of dumb on this one, and I will deal with each in turn. The first type of dumb applies to those people who refuse to wear a seatbelt during the course of the flight. As they tell you on the intercom, “even though the Captain has turned off the seatbelt sign, we ask that you fasten your seatbelt when seated”. I just don’t see the logic in disobeying this simple request. There are many, many reports of flights that hit unexpected turbulence and the injuries to the unfortunately unbuckled passengers are well-documented.  Long gone are the days when a seatbelt was considered so uncomfortable that children and adults alike would protest their application. This kind of dumb cannot really be explained, and we can only hope that the injuries of those who are thrown about during turbulence (and who were not just caught out of their seat at the wrong time—sometimes you are just unlucky) render these people unable to procreate so that we can have fewer of “the dumb” among us in the future. 

The second kind of dumb in this case is far more perplexing to me and I have no real answer for it. People are dumb when they take off their seatbelts at the end of the flight before the “aircraft has come to a complete stop and the Captain has turned off the seatbelt sign”. Again, it is not a difficult instruction to understand and certainly not a difficult one to follow. Let’s throw out all logic about being in a moving vehicle that you are not in control of and which you have no idea about the inner workings of, not to mention the fact that you cannot see anything that is happening outside of it. Why not just follow this rule because the people who run it (and who are financially responsible for your liability while you are on it) tell you to? After all, according to Claire Dunphy from Modern Family, “at the end of the day, [a plane is] still a building, on its side, being thrown from one place to another”—maybe it would be a good idea to trust the people doing the throwing. 

Is it just a petulant need to disregard rules that you don’t think apply to you? Are you some ridiculous teenager testing the limits of your parents’ authority and trying to create an identity for yourself that flips off the man? No? Then stop being dumb. Leave your damn seatbelt on until you are told not to, and don’t piss me off. Oh, and by the way, getting up into the aisle seconds before everyone else does not make the door open any faster. I know you wish it did, but it just doesn’t. Patience is a virtue. So is obedience. People much smarter than you have made rules like this to protect you from your own stupidity. Follow them.

-Sister L