I’ve had to deal with roaring drunks, tantrum-throwing children, marriage-ending screaming matches and gross-out, rent-a-room reconciliations, all at 30,000 feet. But as I was sliding down the inflatable emergency exit chute, I suddenly remembered one woman who insisted she had a medical emergency during a coast-to-coast flight and wanted to know if there was a doctor on board. We made the announcement and a surgeon on his way to a vacation in Hawaii with his family came forward. We took her to the woman, who told him she just realized she needed a refill for her cholesterol medicine.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to escort travelers to their seats while the “Fasten Seatbelts” sign was illuminated. I asked one guy if he had seen the sign. “Yes,” he said, “But I didn’t think it meant me.” That seems to be the prevailing attitude of the troublemakers. The carry-on luggage rules aren’t for them. The lines for the seating sections aren’t for them. The window seat they are in is not the middle seat they’ve been assigned. They think everyone else has to turn off all electrical equipment and cell phones but not them.

“Don’t you know who I am?” many of them ask. The standard joke on board is to turn to the other passengers and yell, “This man does not know who he is. Can anyone help him?” After that the passenger usually says, “You’ll never work on this airline again.”

Promise?

As I picked up speed down the inflatable slide, I wondered where do these people who think the rules don’t apply to them come from? I blame the airlines.

For some reason, they let infants that can sit in the mother’s lap fly for free. If you can annoy people before you can even speak, you’re sure to be good at it when you grow up. They should be charging parents with infants quadruple and make them buy three seats per child. It’s not that I don’t like babies, but I like the other 250 passengers better. It would make much more sense if the airlines let whomever it is that just can’t live another day without seeing this child, fly to see it for free.