1. Park for 30 minutes or more at the “10 seconds alighting – tow away” zone and hold up traffic and pedestrians alike while your 56 pieces of baggage are strewn across the road and walkway.
2. Bump everybody out of the way with your luggage-laden trolley and run over anybody who dares get in your way. A fractured foot or two is no big deal. I mean, if people are flying, why do they need feet?
3. Break your way into the queue at the check-in counter. Of course, you are more important than everybody else and don’t they know who you are?
4. If you really must stand in queue after the vicious protests of those around you, time to open your sandwich which smells like carrion.
5. Press up against the person in front of you – she is bound to appreciate mayo in her hair and the scent of onions on your breath.
6. Argue with the airline personnel about how their weighing scales are wrong. 40kg? What rubbish! Mummy’s IMPORTED kitchen scale only showed 21kg. Check again. Again. Again. Again. IMPORTED scales are never wrong. Again. Again.
7. Continue arguing with the check-in counter staff. God forbid that you leave the spot any time before the wailing infant behind you is ready to graduate from college. Of course, that grand piano is cabin size and qualifies as carry-on baggage. And the pedestal fan? That’s needed for health reasons – you’re asthmatic.
8. Proceed to the security check after telling everybody in no uncertain terms where they can stick it, who your daddy is, how they have no legal daddies, what size and quality of fecal matter they are etc.
9. Repeat Point 3 at the queue at the security check point.
10. Argue loudly with the security personnel over why you must not remove your waist pouch and send it through the screening machine. Everyone must know that you are just back from South Africa and you’re carrying DOLLARS! And GOLD! You’re not one of the bums standing in line who must send their tiddlywinks and Monopoly notes through the scanner.
11. Go in for the security pat-down. Refuse to acknowledge that the bulge in your jeans is really a mobile phone which must be sent through the scanner. Shriek that you, alpha male, feel violated and how the press will be told the gory details of that violation.
12. At the coffee shop, jostle everybody out of the way to get your “braid omlet” and spill your “express-o” on the female thing still wiping mayo out of her hair.
13. In the waiting lounge, place your baggage on the only vacant seat. Your Pustak Mahal plastic bag must be comfortable and takes precedence over the gasping old lady with the oxygen tank.
14. Point and holler at every plane you see taking off and landing. “Plane! Plane!” That’s a rarity in an airport, right - what with all the flying giraffes and Santa sleighs we see on any normal day.
15. Disregard the details of your boarding call. Only seats 1-14 in group one? That’s all right. It is important that you, seat 26, get on that plane first. Don’t they know who you are? Nonsense.
Stay tuned for: How to be a Pest on a Plane.
