[Preparatory Note: For everyone who felt the need to e-mail me to say that Amerigo Vespucci is, in fact, famous in that the United States of America, the continent on which it sits and the continent to its immediate south are named for him, let me simply say this: That was the joke. I was not raised in Amerigo-slavia.]

It is seven in the morning. I am in seat 5A en route to Dallas where I will change planes for a speech tonight in New Orleans, returning home tomorrow. I have made it through security without anyone having to don rubber gloves, so I deem the screening process a success.

At Reagan National Airport, Delta has a separate line at its gates for those passengers who are either flying in first class or hold an upper tier frequent flier level - silver, gold, or platinum are the usual designations. American does not.

One time the lines at Delta were very long so I asked why there was no separate frequent flier lane. I was told that there were too many passengers that day. I allowed as to how a crowded condition is the ONLY time a separate lane is necessary. When there are only a few passengers, who cares?

The Delta agent was unmoved by the clarity of my logic.

As I am getting aboard, two middle-aged gentlemen (at my age anyone not actually receiving a 100th birthday greeting on the Today Show is middle-aged) are negotiating with about seven people in the first class cabin to shift around so they can sit together.

As it is the holiday season, everyone is pretending it is perfectly fine that they hold up the boarding of 120 other passengers so they can accommodate themselves.

Passengers in "The Main Cabin" were then permitted to board. I pretended, as always, to be uninterested in those having to move past me to the REAR OF THE PLANE. Nevertheless, I sit with my body turned toward the aisle enough so that if anyone comes aboard and knows me, they can call to me by name and I can, in a Queen-of-England-sort-of-way, return the greeting.

This happened twice.

We were very, very pleased.

A woman sitting in seat 1A - the window seat on the left side of the plane - began calling to someone I assumed to be her husband sitting across the aisle in seat 1C. She was asking - shouting, really - "Do you have your "Bose"?" referring, one suspects, to the $300 noise-canceling headphones made by the Bose Corporation.

She was shouting because she was wearing her "Bose" and thought the headphones were canceling her voice.

They were not.

I assumed they live in Maryland and, therefore, felt the need to tell everyone they owned not one set of $300 noise-canceling headsets, but two sets. Those of us who live in Virginia think that bragging about the number of noise-canceling headsets we own is very bad form, indeed.

The woman then got up, still wearing her "Bose," and pulled out a huge piece of luggage from the overhead above her seat. She kept removing items and offering them to her husband across the aisle - socks, slippers, a scarf, a small refrigerator, a Lincoln Navigator - all of which he declined.

The guy sitting next to me muttered: "She's acting like we're flying to Antarctica. Someone should tell her we're only going to Dallas."

Naturally she couldn't get her bag back in and, still wearing her "Bose", wrestled with it for a good ten minutes. The guy next to me: "You watch. She's going to hold up the whole plane trying that thing out once we land."

During that miniseries, the captain came on to remind everyone that flight rules out of Reagan National require that all passengers remain seated for the first 30 minutes of the flight, so if anyone needed to use the facilities now would be a good time to do it.

On a recent early morning flight, I was seated in seat 1C and the captain came out of the cockpit, made a similar announcement then headed for the lavatory. He stopped, looked at me, and asked if I were going to need to use it after him.

I said that I had already gone at 1:15 am, 2:37, 3:42, and 5:10, and thus was done for the day.

They closed the cabin door and announced that all electronic devices had to be "turned to the off position." He added, "That means anything with an on-off switch," as though we were not passengers in the First Class cabin of modern jetliner but, in fact, passengers on the small school bus.

A young woman appeared from the rear of the plane and spoke to the flight attendant. She said she was ill and wanted to get off. While she went back to get her coat and purse, the jet bridge was brought back up to the side of the plane, the door was opened, and she left.

I'm thinking, "Ebola." I have just gotten over a siege of some Norwalk Virus-like attack (hence no Mullings this past Friday) so I started breathing out as much as possible until she got out of the plane.

I wondered whether they would have to remove her checked baggage from the hold and, if so, how long that process would take. The flight attendant wondered that, too, saying over the PA, "People smarter than me will be making that decision."

The smarter people made their decision, and we pushed back, the orphaned luggage still in the hold which did not please us at all.

The flight attendant did the usual pre-flight safety announcement, after which he walked to the row where the two men who had earlier played passenger dominoes were sitting. He asked them if they had heard the safety announcement. They lied and said they had.

This is true: The flight attendant quizzed them, asking what the new regulations were with regard to lavatories.

They did not know the answer because they had been talking all the way through the announcement. (Teachers' Guide: On American you have to use the lavatory in your own cabin - no sneaking up to First to use the lavish lav up there).

The flight attendant scolded them and told them that it was a three-hour flight to Dallas and they would have plenty of time to talk after the safety briefing was over.

I said to the guy next to me, "Oh, man. They're getting an "F" in deportment."

I said, "They're lucky. He might have split them up and made one of them sit next to the 'Bose' woman."

As it happened through the majority of the flight the guy in the window seat was asleep and the guy in the aisle read the newspaper. Perhaps each was comforted just knowing the other was near.

The flight attendant, indeed, turned his attention to the "Bose" woman who was sitting and � wearing her "Bose". He asked her to take them off. She pulled the cups away from her ears and asked him what he had said.

She hadn't heard the announcement about turning off all electronic devices because her particular electronic device is specifically designed to block outside noises - like announcements over the aircraft public address system.

I looked out the window to see if the small school bus was being brought up to the plane.

Extra Credit Question: Is that anecdote an example of a paradox or irony?

All of the above happened before we reached the taxiway.

Happy Winter Solstice

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: A brief story about my favorite Winter Solstice day and an amusing Mullfoto.