There he is.  Ahead of me, of course.  Smugly, yet casually talking – a little too loudly – on his cell phone, as he will until the flight attendant has to ask him personally to shut it down.  I can feel the blood rushing to my face as I watch him.  

You know how I’m talking about.  The Salesman.  He’s on just about every flight I’ve ever taken and he always looks the same:  Five-ten, golf shirt, slacks, bit of a belly, tan, gold jewelry and the matched carry-on luggage – neither piece of which will fit under the seat in front of him as it’s supposed to.  Of course he doesn’t care because he’s perfectly able to make sure he gets on before I do and use overhead space I might need.  He has priority.  And although his seat is 12C, he’ll put his bags over row 8 because he thinks he can pull them down faster as he’s walking off the plane.  What about the people who’ll be sitting in row 8?  Screw ‘em; he got here first.

The Salesman is only one of the reasons I would LOVE to see carry-on luggage banned from airplanes.

Now don’t blow your tops.  I know how many people love to schlep their bags around the airport, onto the plane and cram them into overhead bins.  I’ve done it a few times myself.  And I still want to do away with it completely in the interest of civility.

Despite Anne Frank’s faith that deep down we’re all good, people really are pretty self-oriented.  Scarce resources only bring this tendency to the fore.  There are few resources that are scarcer than the overhead space on an airplane and few times when you can see worse behavior than among those who are vying for it.

It begins with everyone jockeying for position at the gate.  My dander starts getting up as I see that many of them have more items than they’re supposed to have or have no bags that will fit under the seat in front of them.  These are, of course, the ones who are most aggressive about getting on board first.

Next are those that manage to get on board with bags that won’t fit in the overhead, either.  How many times I’ve heard, “I’ve never had this trouble before.”  As if the plane will hear them and expand the storage to accommodate them.

And I’m always happy to be banged around by the carry-on-ers as they search for their seats without paying too much attention to the rollaways they’re dragging behind them or who are fumbling with their carry-on, their “personal item,” a pizza and a drink the size of a grain silo.  (Bringing food on a plane like it’s a Greyhound bus will be a later topic.)

All you have to do is watch an old movie or two to be reminded how nice it would be if no one brought anything larger than a briefcase onboard with them.  In this magical world, there would be room for everyone and everything.  Getting on and off the plane would be a breeze and take no time at all.  Anyone who was paranoid about having their luggage lost could still bring some toiletries and a change of underwear with them and all would be much more right with the world.  Better still, I wouldn’t have to spend most of my flights wanting to smack half of the other passengers.  (No, I would never do it – but I think about it a lot.)

We can get there.  We really can.  The airlines just need to step up a little bit in their baggage-handling efficiency and we passengers just need to have a little more faith.  Speaking as someone who’s never had a bag lost, I think that’s possible.

I’m smiling just thinking about it.