a word of advice

for my fellow travelers. The first piece of advice is for the guy sporting the back pack. Not the pre-teens, or even the teenagers. Hopefully you guys will grow out of it. If you don't, you will become the fully grown man with the huge protrusion coming out of his back who has no earthly idea of the personal space he is invading. How can you know? The thing is all the way back there, totally on the opposite side of your eyeballs, and when that enormous man-purse strapped to your back hits people as you lumber through the narrow aisles of an airport bookstore, for example, how can you be expected to be aware? Cut it out. Buy a big boy bag.

The second is for the traveling preschool room mom. I get that it's difficult to entertain a couple of small children while waiting for a flight. I appreciate your efforts in keeping your children in good spirits before shutting them into a small area with a bunch of strangers. I do not, however, feel it is necessary to set up nursery classroom on the floor of the terminal directly in front of the departure gate. The puffy books and the crayolas (not just any box, but the jumbo deluxe box with the sharpener built in...the one with at least 384 colors) dumped completely onto the floor. I'm fairly certain that when they were manufacturing rolling carry-on bags, this was not the type of surface they planned on my bag encountering. Might want to take the mobile classroom to a less obtrusive area, that's all I'm saying. And you might want to even attempt to pick up the things strewn 8 feet around you in every direction BEFORE someone falls over it.

Thanks so much, and have a nice flight.