The Angry Swede

A funny story from our trip:

On our first flight, we met a man whom I like to call the "Angry Swede." He sat in the window seat  next to TJ. I was on the aisle seat, and the girls were on the same row on the other side of the aisle.

Our angry foreign friend boarded long after we had been settled. So when he arrived, TJ and I moved out of our seats and let him squeeze into his seat. (I say squeeze because, indeed, this man was not only an angry Swede, but also a very large Swede - and by large, I mean extremely round).

As he was placing his luggage in the overhead compartment and then squeezing into the row of seats, I realized that I was staring directly into a large hairy crack (yes, it was his bum) . I diverted my eyes, but the image is burned into my memory forever.

The Angry Swede was wearing tiny gray sweat shorts that were sagging much lower than they should, but amazingly, they were still so short that I almost couldn't see the bottom of them under his belly. I did, however, see his pasty white legs covered with thick black hair.

He was also wearing a T-shirt that was much too short to cover the bottom half of his belly. Needless to say, there was a lot of this man showing.

Once we got settled, I decided I would look past the outward appearance of this man and try to get to know him on the inside. I introduced myself and invited him to introduce himself. But he never gave me his name.

Instead, he said he was from Sweden and then went on a rampage on why Americans were stupid. He explained to me that our new president Obama was the only American that was not stupid. He told me that all Americans hate Obama , but that Obama was the best foreign policy leader that America had ever seen because he admitted to the rest of the world that Americans were stupid.

Now, I am not going to get all political here on my blog, and I didn't get political with him, but I did assure him that not all Americans hated Obama. If they did, he would not have gotten elected.

Wait....this guy just called me stupid. How did I react? With a smile of course, and I did my best to change the subject.

I asked why he was visiting America. Instead of an answer, I received a lengthy reprimand on why all Americans were fat. He finished with a concession that he too was fat, but that it was rare for someone from Sweden to be fat like him, so his government was paying for him to get gastric bypass surgery later in the year.

He asked me where I worked. I was pleased that he had finally asked me a question. I explained that I have chosen to stay home and raise my children instead of working. He thought that was ridiculous. He taught me that in Sweden, a mother gets full maternity pay for 18 months after having her baby. He also assured me that all intelligent women work out of the home.

After that, our conversation dwindled.

His unique behavior, however, did not dwindle. I had my laptop open for TJ to watch a portion of a movie. While he was watching, the flight attendants served drinks.

When the Angry Swede received his drink, he pushed my laptop out of the way so he could place his drink on TJ's tray table. In doing so, the laptop slid over onto my tray table nearly knocking down the drinks belonging to TJ and me.

We were given cans of soda along with cups of ice. The Swede kept over-filling his cup so that it spilled onto TJ's tray table. I had to pick up the laptop to keep it from getting covered in soda. I also had to clean up the soda, since the Angry Swede showed no intention of wiping up the mess himself.

Surprisingly, I was not angry. Instead, I chuckled to myself. This was another adventure along our journey. I do, however, feel a little sorry for the Angry Swede. He is not a happy person.