A gold star from Ted Bundy

The other day we were flying from Dante's 8th circle of Hell to Dante's 9th circle of Hell (Dallas to Las Vegas) and we hopped in the front seats as usual. My husband and I have long legs and it's helpful to have a bit more leg room than that afforded to a bull in a stockyard kill box.

Aannd a drunk jumped into the third seat on the aisle. He wasn't drunk when he loaded on- but as he loaded up on Jack and Coke things went swiftly downhill. That is, he started talking. Mostly to the two stewardesses trapped in the jumpseat. But he was merrily and loudly verbal to anyone who would even barely glance his way.

My hubby and were watching a movie on the laptop when this gab-fest started. The movie has great music, so we had the volume up pretty high (using split earphones) and still this bloviating blabbermouth overrode the movie volume.

Now I have no objection to polite, standard stranger chat (Hi how are you having a nice day blah blah) but this blabbing behemoth immediately started telling all within earshot (the whole plane) about how his girlfriend was a 'nutcase' and had been in the loony bin and how he just had to fly to Vegas to gamble and drink a bit to get away from her because she was stalking him... And about how his sister was the only one who knew where he was going and how he hadn't had a drink in 50 (count'em) 50 days and on and on and on. Of course in trying to impress these stews he had to tell them about how he was 50 something and his girlfriend was 38.

After he got a bit drunker he slipped up and told the stews that his girlfriend was a nurse... Oops. Last I heard you lost your nursing license if you had mental problems so bad that you were institutionalized.

But the thing that really got to me was this: all of the very personal information this guy was vomiting out seemed to have one purpose- to elicit very personal information from the two stews. It's the "elicit sympathy and then give info to get info ploy" -and it worked.

By the end of the flight he had actually discovered:

1. the neighborhoods the stews lived in
2. number, age and sexes of their children
3. what schools and colleges the children attended
4. majors and/or fields of study of the children
5. years of future graduation
6. one of the stews real last names and addresses (off the drivers license that she revealed when she flipped open her wallet to show this creep her kids picture.
7. marital status of the stews
8. their work/flight schedules

A past expert at the ''elicit sympathy and then give info to get info ploy'' was the charmingly chatty serial killer Ted Bundy.

Ol' Ted would probably give this guy a gold star.