It’s Never Easy Getting Out Of Guyana
There’s something about Guyana that brings out the crazy in people. Once rational men and women have been known to be brought down to fits of mania where they make terrible decisions of astronomical proportions. Combine that with the recycled air and tight quarters of an international flight and you have yourself a recipe for disaster.
Now, while most people will automatically think of the Peoples Temple when they hear or read about Guyana, one woman and her grandmother will now always think about another (personal) tragedy she experienced on a crowded flight to the South American nation.
So, strap in because the following story is one for the history books. And don’t worry, this tale doesn’t end with a tragedy on the scale of the ill-fated Jonestown community… but that’s not to say it doesn’t end with some hysterics…
Getting On The Plane
Like any good story, this one begins with a young woman by the name of Nancy, who along with her elderly grandmother, was recently getting ready to board a flight out of the jungle nation tucked away in the northern reaches of the South American continent. Nancy had taken her grandmother back to the village where she was born and raised to visit extended family members and now the duo was ready to head back home.
Nancy said the trip to Guyana had been a smooth one. She was able to secure fist class seats after racking up a “ton of miles” and so they thought the trip home would be just as simple and just as nondescript as their flight over.
It was late at night when Nancy and her grandmother’s plane was finally set to depart from Guyana, so to say they were exhausted would be an understatement.
“We were just hanging out by the gate, doing our thing, when they called for first class, priority members, and military with active IDs to board first,” Nancy recalled. “Okay, we boarded. No problem there.”
Simple enough, right? Well, fate had something else in store for Nancy and her elderly grandmother…
“I Heard A Throat Clear Behind Me”
When Nancy and her grandmother got on the plane, they went through the normal routine – Nancy placed their bags into the overhead bin while her grandmother situated herself in the window seat. But as Nancy was organizing their bags before the long flight back home, she heard a sound coming from behind her shoulder.
“I heard a throat clear behind me,” Nancy wrote.
Enter the “Entitled Mother,” who we will affectionally reference as EM for the rest of the story.
This “thirty something woman” had a young child in tow (“Entitled Kid” or EK) who Nancy said couldn’t be any older than 5 or 6 years of age. As soon as Nancy took a look at this woman and her “let me talk to the manager” haircut, she knew this flight would be anything but simple and peaceful.
But what did she want?
Whatever it was, Nancy knew it wasn’t going to be good based on the way EM looked at her and her seats before exclaiming that Nancy and her grandmother were sitting in this woman’s seats.
“Oh, sorry, hang on and let me check my boarding pass,” Nancy remembered saying to the obviously confused woman.
But before Nancy could pull them out, the woman let out this nugget of information: “Well, it’s not actually our seats but [EK] here was so good this entire trip, and we’re both really tired. Would you mind switching seats with us? I’ll hold him in my lap during the flight. We’re in coach.”
Nancy was kind at first, telling the woman that she needed to be able to sit next to her grandmother and that the seats set them back quite a bit.
The woman, unimpressed by Nancy’s response, asked her to point out her grandmother, almost like she didn’t believe that the woman in the seat next to Nancy wasn’t related. Nancy pointed out her grandmother, who wasn’t really “paying attention to the conversation” at this point.
The woman, again, didn’t believe Nancy, saying, “There’s no way that’s your grandmother; you’re lying!”
Nancy repeated herself when she said that the woman in the seat was in fact her grandmother, but the woman, again, didn’t believe her, saying that was “ridiculous.”
It seems that for some reason, EM didn’t believe that Nancy was flying with her grandmother. Maybe she thought Nancy was making the whole thing up in order to get a little sympathy from the woman. Maybe the woman thought Nancy just didn’t want to give up her seat.
But the ridiculousness only got worse when the woman’s son got involved…
And Then The Child Got Involved
While Nancy was still trying to convince the woman that she and her grandmother were actually family, the son started to have a little meltdown of his own.
“I want to sit down, mommy!” the child cried out.
“I know, sweetie, I’ll get this all worked out,” said the defiant mother before she turned to Nancy and yelled out, “How dare you cause my child to cry? Give us your seat, you liar.”
But Nancy was unmoved by the latest round of insults and demands and stood her ground.
“No! I paid for these seats,” she yelled out. “I’m not giving them up.”
This only made the child’s cries grow louder, which got the attention of Nancy’s grandmother.
Now that her grandmother was paying attention, Nancy quickly caught her up to speed on everything that was going down with EM and her crying child. And without missing a beat, Nancy’s grandma stood up and started confronting the woman for her terrible behavior.
“Excuse me, but you cannot sit here,” cried out Nancy’s grandma. “This is my grandbaby and she said she doesn’t want to give up her seat.”
To which the woman said, “Oh, she is not your grandchild!”
We’ll let Nancy explain in her own words what happened next:
“My grandmother gets silent for a moment,” Nancy recalled. “She gets this look in her eye that I’ve seen many time when I was a kid when I was misbehaving around her.”
“So?!” questioned Nancy’s grandmother as she spoke to the woman. “She’s my grandchild. Now leave. WE are sitting together in the seats WE paid for.”
Now, there comes a point in just about every argument/confrontation/fight where one of the involved parties realizes that they’ve made a mistake and make the decision to simply bow out and move on. This is not one of those times.
“Excuse me? Of course it matters,” cried the woman. “You’re lying so she won’t give us her seat. The both of you should give your seats to me for being liars.”
Shocked by the way the situation has progressed, shocked by the way this woman keeps yelling out nonsense, and shocked by the way she told her to give up her seats for lying, Nancy could only stand there as the woman’s child continues to cry and Nancy’s grandmother looks like she’s about to snap and start throwing punches.
But before anyone could do anything, a flight attendant came in to save the day…
When The Flight Attendant Wasn’t Enough
Walking up and trying to keep the line of people moving, the flight attendant asked Nancy and EM if there was a problem. And without missing a beat, EM took the opportunity to dig a bigger hole for herself.
“These people took our boarding passes,” the woman lied. “They’re sitting in our seats!”
For some reason – who knows why – it seems like the flight attendant didn’t believe the woman.
Nancy’s grandmother quickly jumped up and explained the situation but left out the whole part about the woman being unreasonable and won’t leave them alone. Without taking too much effort, the flight attendant quickly realizes that Nancy and her grandmother were the ones telling the truth and now turns her attention to the lying mother and her uncontrollable son.
“Ma’am, I’m going to ask you to please go to your assigned seat so that others can board the plane,” the flight attendant said.
But unwilling to back down from a fight she was clearing losing, EM continued on her one-woman crusade against the grandmother and granddaughter.
“This girl is lying!” yelled the woman.
Having let this go on far enough, the flight attendant stops EM in her tracks and tells her that she doesn’t have to go back to her seat but instead she and her son have to get off the plane, immediately.
“This kind of behavior will not be tolerated on (airline),” the flight attendant said. “Please gather your things and leave the plane. We’ll schedule you on a different flight.”
If lying to the flight attendant wasn’t bad enough, EM then started lying to her son when he asked if they weren’t going home.
“No, we are, sweetie,” said the lying mother.
“She faces the flight attendant and starts screaming, and I mean SCREAMING bloody murder,” Nancy recalled. “She yells about us lying, the unfair treatment, etc.”
Nancy said the flight attendant was forced to call security to drag the woman, who was “kicking and screaming” off the plane. While this was going on, her son was wailing as he watched his mother getting forcefully removed from the plane.
“Before security could gather him as well, he approached me and starts PUNCHING me in the upper leg,” Nancy recalled. “Granted, he’s a little kid but I had some nasty sunburn there and it hurt like the dickens.”
Security finally dragged the little heathen off the plane but not before he bit a security guard like he was some wild animal or something of the sort.
But finally, both the mother and child were removed from the flight, allowing Nancy and her grandmother to go on with their flight back home.
Finally, Some Peace And Quiet
Nancy said that once everything settled down, the flight attendant came back over to her seat and offered her apologies to Nancy and her grandmother. If that wasn’t good enough, the flight attendant also said that the airline would be reimbursing them for the cost of their seats due to the disturbance.
According to Nancy, the flight itself was “uneventful” and she and her grandmother were able to get back home with nothing terrible happening.
But the events that led up to Nancy’s flight will never be forgotten by she or her grandmother, though it’s probably safe to say that the entire incident was just a normal travel story for the crazed entitled mom and her son that should be placed in a muzzle.
Who knew it would be so hard to get out of Guyana?