Last week I went to Washington, D.C., for work and I flew Southwest.
People are generally decent in this airline’s “Hunger Games”-style boarding process, but there’s always one couple sitting in the window and the aisle seats trying super hard to keep the middle seat open.
On this trip, that couple sat in the aisle in front of me. A man trudged up from the back of the plane and tried to claim the seat.
“There’s one up there,” the woman pointed.
A woman behind him tried next.
The window-seat woman patted the middle seat in the next aisle.
“This is open.”
This couple ended up with the one open seat on the plane. Part of me thinks, whatever, good for them. But most of me was annoyed by this, as I always am by the window-and-aisle-seat couple. Just sit together! Or don’t!
Why am I telling you this?
Here in Tampa Bay, we celebrate Festivus thanks to Tampa Bay Times reporter Christopher Spata. I didn’t get my gripe into him, but man, it feels good to get it off my chest. (Also people who don’t return grocery carts to the corrals are generally monsters. OK, I’m done.)
Spata first discovered the holiday in a 1997 episode of “Seinfeld.” He and his roommates had a Festivus pole and texted each other their grievances on the eve of Christmas Eve. (As a reminder, according to CNN, the episode-inspired holiday also includes feats of strength and a feast.)
“What cemented my love for Festivus was when I worked at the Tampa Tribune,” Spata told me in an email. “We had a holiday lunch in the office one year. Someone set up a box to submit grievances anonymously beforehand and one of my coworkers read them out loud as we ate. Those grievances from a bunch of salty veteran reporters were, as you might imagine, hilarious and unprintable. Although the one that I can never forget simply said, ‘We’re all going to die,’ which made everyone laugh really hard. That really is the ultimate grievance.”
In 2016, Spata was working for the Tampa Bay Times (which Poynter owns) and asked readers for their Festivus grievances in an audience call-out.
“Readers loved it,” Spata said, “and I was asked to make it an annual tradition.”
He starts collecting grievances in December. They average around 300, but last year after CNN wrote about the Times’ tradition, he got about 700.
“Every year there are new trends and old standbys,” Spata said. “This year there was a lot of general displeasure with Elon Musk and a lot of people who wanted to complain about Tesla’s Cybertrucks, though they weren’t very specific about why.”
Shopping cart etiquette, he told me, is always in the mix. (😬)
And a favorite gripe of all time?
When my 12-year-old son calls me “bro.” Last I checked, I was still “mom.”
“This one is so simple, but I can see it in my mind, this kid calling his mom ‘bro,’ and for some reason that never ceases to be funny to me,” Spata said. “I also love when they’re super specific and petty, such as this one from the very first year.”
My cousin’s husband ate my Christmas cookies six years ago and still hasn’t apologized.
This story first appeared in Local Edition, our newsletter about and for local journalists.
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