divine angst

What do you do when you are seated next to an annoying teenager on an airplane?

That’s what my brother wondered last week. He was assigned to that seat in the back of the plane, the one next to the not-window, and two 13-year-old girls were next to him.

One of the girls had obviously seen Napoleon Dynamite one too many times, because every fourth word out of her mouth was, “Daaaaang!” After a few minutes, he started counting them but lost track when she used it four times in one sentence.

How could he make her stop? he wondered. And then it came to him: she’d say, “Daaaang!” and he’d repeat it softly, almost under his breath: “daaaang!” It only took ten minutes for her friend to notice what he was doing and make her friend shut up. And there was silence.