A Brush with Greatness

I had to take a business trip at the end of this past April.  Now I don't want to brag, but when my company sends me on business, I get to fly "coach".  This particular trip I was flying on Southwest, so  not only was I flying coach, I was flying general admission.  Essentially the same method of ordering people that has cased numerous concert goers to be trampled to death was being used to board my airplane.  I think this may have been my fault - I think perhaps I could have been assigned a seat if I had gotten a boarding pass ahead of time.
It was Monday afternoon, and I was in the extreme North part of Terminal A at RDU airport (actually I have no idea if it is North, but it is all the way at the end of a very long building that has been added on to a couple of times).  The scene here was about as upscale as WalMart very late at night.  Airports are such an odd grouping of people under stress there was no doubt in my mind that something interesting would happen that I would write about 5 months later.
The first noteworthy thing that happened was several flights, including mine, being delayed.  I don't remember exactly why - but it was either that a crew had worked too many hours and had to be replaced, or an airplane had to be repaired.  As I walked through the crowded terminal  I saw a man in his 30s explaining to some sort of employ from Southwest that this was why the airlines are in such trouble, that planes were late and people didn't want to fly, that they needed to hurry up and get back on schedule.  I'm not sure how to stress this, but the person who was saying this was rather upset, and seemed to have no idea that the fact people don't like to wait for their flights might already have dawned on the airline.  I want to state for the record, when you are finding the crew to fix my airplane, take your time and find the best rested people you can.  And when you are fixing my airplane, please take all the time you need.  I don't want you worrying that anybody on that plane might be in a rush when you're tightening a lugnut on the airplane I am about to fly on.
I didn't feel like explaining that to the gentleman who was making the small scene in the terminal, because I would have been within his reach and I wasn't sure how he handled disagreements.  So, I made my way to an empty seat, "excuseme'd" past a tall black man who looked to be in his 50s, and sat down.  I looked over at the man, who was nodding off, and thought "wow, that's him"..."nah", "but it must be", "nah".  After a few minutes of this, the man woke up and stood to stretch his legs.  I approached him and said "Hi, were you just at Charlie Goodnights?  He slowly answered "yeah, I was".  At that moment I realized I was in the presence of entertainment greatness.  I was sharing my fairly miserable, running late, general admission flight to Las Vegas with none other than Jimmy "JJ" Walker.  I took out my phone and asked if I could get a picture with him.  He very politely said "It would make things a little easier for me if I didn't have to" - which I took to mean "if anybody else recognizes me I'll have a terminal full of idiots screaming DIN-O-MITE at me".  He offered a handshake instead, which I thought was a nice way to handle the situation.
Above is what that picture might have looked like.  I cropped Ann Coulter out of this picture (which as far as I saw was not copyrighted).