People from Montana

I’m on an airplane headed to Montana.  I’m actually a pretty apprehensive traveller; it’s not that I’m afraid to fly or anything like that—I just like familiar things, I guess.  Friendly things.  Sometimes you get that when you travel and sometimes you don’t.

But Montana’s familiar, and today hasn’t been too bad: I got an entire row of seats to myself on the first flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis, and you better believe I slept all the way sprawled out like a hobo on a bench with a newspaper on top of me.  And now, even though we just had to wait on the plane, at the gate for over an hour, I’m with people from Montana.  And I totally love people from Montana.

So, I’m sitting with these two men: one’s wearing a cowboy hat—he’s a rancher.  The other’s wearing a baseball cap—he’s a miner.  Well, actually no: he was a miner, but now he digs bunkers for the military.  The miner looks a lot like a mole, the rancher just looks like a regular rancher with sideburns and a goatee. 

At first, the rancher was putting the moves on me pretty hard, because a) I’m irresistible to cattlemen: it’s a well-documented blessing SLASH curse and b) what else is there to do when you’re sitting at the gate waiting for the world's slowest catering truck to stock the plane than hit on the woman sitting next to you who literally cannot NOT talk to a person sitting next to her?

Anyway, so Rancher was giving me some pointers on arm wrestling (“All you got to do is make eye contact and wink at’em and BAM! On the table.”) when Miner, sitting on the other side of him, suddenly interrupts:

Miner: I don’t like to interrupt, but arm wrestling's just 20% strength. It’s a scientific fact.

Rancher: Yeah, it’s all in the wrist.

Miner: Well,…in the wrist and intimidation factor. And some other stuff.  I’m 50 years old but I can beat just about anybody I ever met.

Rancher: I never met anybody I couldn’t wrestle to the table.  Too bad we’re on a plane, or I’d wrestle you right here.

INSTANT FRIENDS!!  I totally don’t even exist right now—they’re talking about elk hunting.  Which proves that dudes love other dudes more than they love women, even though they think they like women more. 

Also: before we took off, Rancher called the steward a Bunnyhugger to his face.  His FACE!

I love people from Montana.