How can you tell that drastic changes have occurred in airline passengers? Your entrance into any airport should give you the first indication that you have encountered alien creatures who are definitely not the travelers of the past. Approaching you are two fantastic individuals with matching T-shirts loudly displaying “I’m with Stupid!” and, boy, are they right. They’re yelling at each other, screaming obscenities about their separate parentage and giving all the other verbal victims at the airport a real “Jerry Springer” show.

Consider four hours in flight sitting next to this obnoxious pair. One does not have to relate the horrors of getting characters like these through the ticket gate. They lack identification or can’t find it among cigarette cartons and 300 pounds of carry-on luggage that will never fit anywhere but a U-Haul truck.

Well, you lose sight of this pair — thank goodness — and amble your way to the security checkpoint. Act II is ready to begin. Beulah and Bo Luke have brought the whole clan to the airport. Finally, the herd is corralled beyond the gates and Beulah and Bo Luke start the process of passing security. Bo Luke’s handgun would have set off the alarms, but he passed it to Jimmy Chester so he would have it for his weekend visits to numerous 7-Elevens.

Beulah is not so lucky. The switchblade strapped to her thigh creates a symphony of alarms. Beulah is relieved of her weapon but allowed to pass because one would not want to offend these important travelers. Bo Luke and Beulah have disappeared into the crowd.

Luckily, the number of drinking establishments has increased exponentially with the quality and class of the current traveling public. Go figure. You now are in the Boarding Gate Zone.

The crowd is waiting with bated breath. The minute the microphone is keyed, they hear the words before they materialize into wavelengths of sound. “We will begin boarding … “ No other words are heard as the entire population of Gate — you name the number — rushes the door leading to the unsuspecting plane and its crew.

Screaming, pushing and shoving, it does no good to tell them that they have assigned seats. They are in a mindset that says that someone will steal their seats and no reassurance can change their herd mentality.

With its stamina, the flight crew herds the animals aboard and commences the countdown to take-off. Since this really is just a Greyhound in the sky, these alien creatures fail to stay in their seats, won’t buckle up and as the plane begins to taxi down the runway, their screams of terror drown out the engine roar.

Hours later, it is time to come down from the skies where these modern-day barbarians prepare to return like locusts to the highways and byways. The command goes forth to stay in your seats with seat belts buckled until the plane comes to a complete stop at the gate. Beulah appears again. As soon as the plane puts one wheel on the tarmac, she is up and out of her seat.

She manages to get the overhead compartment open before the momentum of the landing has catapulted her down the aisle, flat on her face, screaming, swearing and vowing to sue the airline. Her quick fingers on the overhead compartment have succeeded in causing all the 300 pounds of her carry-on to fall directly on the head of one of her fellow travelers who is now knocked unconscious and will not have to worry about walking off the plane since his only transportation will be in a wheelchair.

Now we find the travelers who remember what travel was really like in the past sitting quietly in their seats waiting for the “other” passengers to be herded off the plane. The travelers of the past close their collective eyes and remember a more genteel time when people who knew how to act like human beings were the only passengers flying the friendly skies. They remember a time long ago when it was an important element of one’s upbringing to be able to be seen as civilized. No matter how we might try, it appears that we are seeing the end of civilization as it was once known.

Craig Gunn is a State News columnist and director of the communication program for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Reach him at gunn@egr.msu.edu.