On a recent flight from Sacramento to St. Louis on Southwest Airlines, I set my eyes upon two seats in a row at the back of the plane. As I prepared to deposit my luggage and sit down, a clean-cut man announced to me and those around me “Hey, before you sit down I just wanna let you know I have Tourette Syndrome and will say some stuff that will be offensive, so I totally understand if you want to move to another seat.” Everyone wholeheartedly assured him that we had no problem with his illness and would be happy to sit by him. We said (and thought) something like this:
“Oh no
we are all going to be on edge the entire damn flight over some shit you might yell out to the entire plane, that’s fine, we have no problembut you better not yell out some impolitic shit like NIGGER of FAG or HOEwith that. It’s all goodbut I hope this flight will be quicker than usual.
My 12 year-old cousin and I sat down in the seats in front of him and prepared for take off. I grabbed a magazine and my cousin played games on my iPod. As we reached cruising altitude, the usual in-flight routine began. Flight Attendants took drink orders, passengers crowded the aisle to get to the restroom, and babies commenced crying, The man with Tourette had struck up a conversation with his seatmate about sports and all was well. And then we heard this: “I don’t know if the Giants are going to FUCK make it all the way this year but I’m a Rams fan so SHIT FUCK it doesn’t make a difference to me.
We had been warned about the outbursts but when they actually happened we stopped breathing for a second or two and then slowly relaxed and returned to what we had been doing. So the cycle of expletives, followed by momentary tenseness, followed by restoration of previous activities continued. It actually became amusing at one point. Hearing the random shout of FUCK and SHIT every so often during a quiet plane ride is quite comical.
And then it happened. NIGGER.Wait WHAT?
“Excuse me, can I NIGGER have another napkin NIGGER?”
Oh hell naw!. My cousin and I locked eyes. Did he just? What the? How you gonna go from SHIT, FUCK, FUCK to NIGGER? It quickly became not so funny. What do we do? Turn around and say something? We couldn’t change seats at that point in the flight. Finally I decided to use my iPod to listen to music. My cousin, po’ child, was on his own.
Since that experience I have learned a little more about Tourette Syndrome. Psychiatric professionals use the term coprolalia to describe an involuntary type of tic that controls speech or activity. Based upon my unscientific, non-statistical, Wikipedia-based research on coprolalia, the obscenities and other words uttered by those with this tic do not necessarily reflect the thoughts of the individual.
As a Black American Princess I am nice, refined, and know how to suppress my true emotions very well, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. MUTHERFUCKING BITCH!
Just kidding.
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