Confusion

I was flying home from Houston last evening and when we boarded the airplane at Bush Intercontinental Airport I noticed something unusual in the row in front of me.

There was a man and a woman who looked like a husband and wife.

They were seated in the Exit Row.

You know the shtick....the flight attendant came back to tell us that we were sitting in the Exit Row and in addition to having extra leg room we had extra responsibilities.

I have heard the speech hundreds of times so I was already doing something else while all of this was taking place.

All of us seated in the Exit Row grunted an affirmative response to the questions posed by the flight attendant. Everybody except my neighbors one row ahead of us.

They were busily reading the instructions entitled "In the Event of An Emergency"

After a few minutes they summond the flight attendant who sighed and walked back toward them.

What happened next was shocking.

The man spoke and said, "Excuse me, there is a discrepancy between the written instructions and the instructions printed on the Exit Door. One says pull the door in and store inside the plane and the other says open the door and throw it outside the plane. Which one is it?

Say what? The man's comment had my attention.

I realize that in the event of an emergency I and a hundred others will have already crawled over the man ahead of me while he is still trying to decide whether to store the Exit Door inside the airplane or throw it outside.

But wait there's more.

The Flight Attendant took the written instructions and began to read them. The last thing I heard him say was, "you know I have worked for the airlines a long time and I have never really read the instructions myself."

"WHAT?"

Here's the bottom line...I prayed a lot. There was no emergency requiring my neighbor to take action.

The flight attendant finally mumbled something like, "If we have an emergency do whatever you think."

I am glad to be back on terra firma.