I am keenly aware of my own demographic, especially when traveling. As an upper-middle-aged white woman, I ride the razor’s edge, teetering on the verge of Karen-hood, every time I leave the house.

However, I have decided that throwing a fit in public is an acceptable activity, provided you are acting on behalf of someone other than yourself. Say, for example, your fully loaded plane lands late, and many people, usually those in the far recesses of the back of the plane, are under pressure to make their connections. The flight attendant gets on the horn and asks everyone who is not in danger of missing their next flight to stay in their seats until those in a hurry have had a chance to deplane. As soon as I hear this announcement, I tense up, scanning the crowd in front of the plane to see who is going to ignore this very reasonable request.

The answer to this question is, almost always, everybody. The plane lurches to a halt, the seatbelt light pings off, and the sheeplike humanoids inhabiting the front rows of the airplane surge mindlessly to their feet and start scrabbling for their stuff. Those unfortunate souls who are stuck in the back, muttering that their flights are already loading, go unheard and unheeded. That is, until I get involved.

This happened on one flight during my last cross-country excursion, and after speaking up pointedly a few times and going unnoticed, I barked, “Let these people through!” Where upon the cranky woman who had been fussing at her kids the entire flight barked back, “We’re moving! Stop yelling.” Whereupon I returned fire with this witty rejoinder: “Just sit down!” Mind you, since everybody between us was standing up and reaching overhead, she and I could not see each other, meaning we could safely yell at each other without making eye contact. Eventually, at least some of those in need got through, and I rather defensively congratulated myself, bolstering my position by saying to the (seated) person next to me, “Can you even believe these people?”

Mind you, even though I was not looking at the woman I was bandying words with, I knew who she was. After deplaning, I saw her standing nearby as I was coming out of the bathroom, and I decided to make nice. I summoned up a smile of sorts, but she looked away immediately. As I passed, I heard her say to her companion, “there goes the loudmouth.”

You just can’t be nice to some people.