I HaS A Real Life “Everybody Clapped” Moment, Courtesy of The Germans

I’m with my wife at the Schipol Airport this morning in the KLM Lounge. It’s open to all passengers, they just charge a sliding scale depending on your ticket class. As a result it’s pretty crowded but being European, people are generally using their inside voices and they have unlimited mini waffles with strawberry sauce and “chocolate paste” so we are here for it.

We’ve just gotten off an overnight flight from Johannesburg and we are tired and grumpy. 4 hour layover then a day flight home to Canada. My tolerance for nonsense is minimal at this moment, I just want to eat mini waffles covered in chocolate paste.

A boomer lady has other plans. In a soothing ocean of mellow European adult conversations full of soft S sounds, a loud, shrill American accent breaks through;

“…it so awful! You wouldn’t believe things I’ve heard here, they are so disrespectful…”

It’s a mid 60’s woman in a green tracksuit in stark contrast to the dress shirts, polos, fitted slacks, and faux turtlenecks that everyone else seems to be wearing. She is honestly dressed like a child compared to everyone else.

She is pacing back and forth behind a row of chairs, holding her phone in front of her on her upward facing palm. Whoever she is talking to is wheezing incoherently like Darth Vader on a CB radio.

She continues: “the people are so biased, the news is so biased, <unintelligible>

People are looking up from their espressos and glaring as she keeps pacing. 40’ away and I can still hear her.

As she comes back my wife looks at me with a look that says “DO it. I trust you.”

I’m on the fence until she gets close enough and I hear “….and he’s just trying to help white people”

I stand up directly in front of her “If you are going to be on your phone, you need to go somewhere else please.”

She stops, pauses and is about to say something me when the man next to us joins in in perfect German-accented English (I’m assuming his name is Dieter and he is an engineer who designs exquisitely intricate brushed aluminum parts for machines that are used to build other machines):

“There are business rooms on the other side where you may speak as loudly as you like.” He then glares at her through his lightly blue tinted acetate glasses.

Shocked by my Canadian rebuke and completely devastated by the cutting efficiency of my German Ally, she retreats to regroup at the buffet.

I look around and while everyone else has gone back to their phones and appropriately volumed and non-fascist conversions, I know they are clapping on the inside.