I don't want to know

At the beginning of the flight they gave us two forms to fill in. The middle-aged gentleman beside me didn’t have a ballpoint, so he asked the lady whose child was crying if he could borrow her pen.

Immediately the lady said, “No!” But that was not enough. Then she stood up and started insulting him.

Then I said to the man, “You can use my ballpoint.”

The man said to me, “This lady and I used to be married, but now we are separated. Do you know why we are separated?”

I said, “I don’t know anything, and I don’t want to know.”

But he didn’t listen to me. He just continued, “That child is not mine, but she claims it is.”

I said to myself, “Oh, I have to hear this kind of thing!”

Then the lady started screaming at him — using such foul language. O my God!

I put away my ballpoint and pretended I had to go to the bathroom. For more than ten minutes I stood near the bathroom door. Finally I went back to my seat, but the fight was still going on! So again I left, all the time praying to God that this story would end. When I came back the second time, it had stopped.

I was so lucky not to get involved. Such a foul tongue the lady had!

— 20 January 1989