Anyway in honor of Opera Lady, it’s story time!

So maybe four(?) years ago I was headed to London to give a lecture and I got turned around and wound up in the first class lounge.

They do not let just anyone into the first class airport lounge, you proles

I am/used to be conversational in multiple languages and competent or fluent in three. I still dream in German sometimes though I rarely have need to speak it. Language skills devolve without use, same as anything you don’t keep brushed up on

So I’m speaking to this very nice lady at the counter trying to find where is the lounge for the have-nots. I’m trying to find my ticket because she politely doesn’t really believe I’m not trying to scam my way into middle class airport arrangements.

I am wearing comfy clothes and no makeup. My hair is green. But I’ve got an expensive leather business bag and an expensive suitcase that will fit in international overhead. These are signs to be cautious because people on their one big trip don’t travel like that.

So she’s trying to be helpful just in case I’m a musician or something, she’s seen my battered passport and I’m asking relevant questions and she’s accepting that maybe I belong here on the margins. Not born to money but in this world who can predict fame, amirite

And this woman rocks up behind me with the most withering “exCUSE me but I’m not in the mood to wait in a line. I am FIRST CLASS.”

There is no line. This *is* first class and there’s two other attendants to check people in precisely so that there is never a fucking line

I turned around, looked her slowly up and down, looked dead in her eyes and said “oh, I didn’t know fashions from three seasons ago had come back into style. I did want that bag when it was new, did you buy it on the street? Those vendors really give you a deal.”

And I turn back

And this attendant, who clearly has decided that she will help me now, goes sotto voce in perfect Swiss German

Das ist perkeft

Nobody in this little tableaux expects me to speak anything but small-town English.

So I ask wie teuer ist die Entritt and I’m kicking myself about the pronouns

And this attendant looks like I kicked over the counter or something. Just utter shock. My accent is variant Bavaria and westphalia depending on the word.

Woman behind me is spluttering a tiny bit

So I slide my card across the counter cool as a shady spot on a spring day, and she can just tell I’m pissed off but not at her, and that is how I wound up in my first-ever first-class lounge at an airport.

Totally fucking worth it btw, was less than my bar tab would have been

The first class lady avoided me like plague for two hours but somehow the staff communicated so anytime we both needed service or checking on I was always somehow first in the rotation and it quietly fucking killed her but the thing about it is

If they let you in, you belong there. Maybe not socially, maybe you’re splurging for your honeymoon or your dream vacation or whatever but you paid the same money as everyone else to be there and nobody can say boo to you without being horribly ill-mannered

Anyway I still don’t have a damn clue what kind of bag she was carrying. I just know that the sort of person who talks loudly about the superiority of things like opera really, really, really care whether you noticed their satchel superiority and the pureness of their purse dogs

And I know that even after years I remember second-year German and can deploy that shit when someone expects me to be a rube.