Old lady bullying

I remember a Monty Python sketch from years ago about "senile delinquents". They were a bunch of old ladies who would go around battering young folk with their handbags.

They operated under the motto "make tea, not war."

Hilarious.

Well I observed something bizarre in the airport on Thursday last, and it made me think of the aforementioned sketch.

I was sitting at the gate waiting to board my flight to the UK when these two old ladies came up to the gate area. I was waiting to board at gate 22 which, naturally enough, is located adjacent to gate 23. The two gates share a common seating area and it was pretty full with people, the flight at gate 23 about to depart for Barcelona and my flight to the UK delayed (yawn.. again) at gate 22. I was sitting over at the edge next to gate 23 not that it mattered.

They rushed up, and the taller of the two old ladies pointed at gate 22 and they charged the Aer Lingus desk. Once there the Aer Lingus ground staff indicated that the flight was in fact delayed and that they should take a seat.

About 10 minutes later what can only be described as a little old lady arrived and wandered over to these other two ladies. From the ensuing conversation it became clear that they were friends and had arranged to meet at the airport on their way to the UK. It then became clear that the littlest lady had arrived first and on arriving at the airport and not seeing the other two had gone ahead and checked in. This seemed to have really ticked off the other two, especially the tallest of the three. She was miffed about this, big time.

The two who were together at first then started picking on the littlest one, berating her for going ahead and checking in, and attacking her justification for doing so. Then they started with a line of dialogue along the lines of "maybe the next time we'll agree to stick to the plan we made".

No matter how the littlest one tried to explain or even to apologise for the mix-up, the other two started berating her all over again.

It was amazing to watch. They were clearly all in their sixties and old enough to know better but it was like watching three schoolgirls, bitching and arguing.

I guess there's always the latent child in each of us.