International Incident

Rome, about 2AM local time...

"That's enough! I warned you once!" The man in the seat ahead of me yelled.

He wasn't talking to me. He was yelling at the 60 year old missionary next to me.

He flashed credentials," I am a diplomat! Do you know it is a criminal offense to assault a diplomatic office? Do you?"

"What is he saying," the woman said. She started bawling.

"You know what you did. Enough!"

A crying old woman. I felt I had to intervene.

"What is your problem, dude?" I asked.

"She's been spitting at me the whole flight!"

"What?" I asked. "I haven't seen that."

"She has, and it has to stop." Our diplomatic corps.

"Why would she do that?"

"She knows I am a diplomat, ans hse made racial comments earlier."

"But, " I started, "You're both white."

"Racist comments! Enough!" he yelled.

The flight attendants came by, but barely handled the situation. The offered puzzlement.

"Ok," I said. "Why don't one of you change seats?"

"What did I do?" the old woman said crying.

"It doesn't matter now," I said.

"Brother," another missionary froma a row or two back said. "I'll change seats."

And he did. No more allegations of provactive spitting the rest of the flight. And we were back off to Africa.