This past week in the news, as seemingly each week, there was another report of what has been dubbed ‘air rage,’ when yet another flight was forced to divert, this time to New Zealand, because of an unruly passenger.

Never have I been so grateful not to be touring full time anymore.

For well over 20 years, I could have saved rent money and just taken a cot inside various terminals. I amassed nearly a million frequent flier miles on Delta and traveled so often on others that I would encounter flight crews with such familiarity it got to the point where I could ask such things as “How’s the gallbladder?” or, “Did you ever try that deli we were talking about, in Chicago?” And never, not once, did I ever encounter a single case of air rage, whether it was domestically, or anywhere else in the world. 

That’s not to say I haven’t come close to committing air rage, or actually, air hysteria, myself. Coming into Sicily during the good old, pre 9/11 days when everyone felt immortal, and witnessing flight attendants standing and chatting in the back of the plane with several passengers, everyone gesturing wildly with cigarettes they had just lit with the ground coming up very quickly, left me hyperventilating.

I even managed not to begin sobbing when the small plane in which I was traveling, valiantly fighting wind gusts as we attempted our second landing, at midnight, in Sitka, Alaska, on an airstrip surrounded by water and boulders, under the light of a full moon. I looked for reassurance into the face of the only other passenger, a large, grizzled man sitting opposite me, a small crate of chicks resting on his lap and peeping continuously throughout the flight, when he suddenly turned to me and blurted, “Sh**! I’m scared.”

You can therefore understand that when I read of today’s dangerously belligerent passengers, and let me make myself clear, this is indeed recent behavior, my inner mullet begins to unfurl and I long to slap some sense into them.

However, if there’s one thing more potentially catastrophic than some idiot threatening violence because he didn’t get his Jack and Coke on time or she didn’t like being told to sit down and buckle up when the sign is illuminated, it’s them then being punched in the throat by a lanky southern woman, followed by my deft ability to hogtie them like a lassoed calf.

I’m actually not a violent person, I only fantasize about it when such news events come over the wire. In reality, I know quite well that I would simply sit there, hiding behind my magazine, praying that no one tries to open the emergency exit.

But something has to be done. Behavior that is deemed so out of control that it requires an aircraft to divert, sometimes hours out of its way to intended destination, cannot be tolerated. We’re a savvy country. We’ve landed little ATVs on Mars and can now make only one tasty cup of hazelnut coffee at a time, so it seems to me that we can design retractable arms into each airline seat which, at the touch of a flight attendant’s button, can reach out and snap shut around the unruly passenger, rendering him immobile, arms clamped against his sides. It can be left to the flight attendant’s discretion whether or not to then lower a sort of Hannibal Lector mask that fits snugly over his nose and mouth, and then the rest of us can get on deciding between the identically shaped processed chicken or steak.

There was an airline expert interviewed about this spate of bad behavior on the national news and his rather weak consensus was this: “People have less and less room on planes and when you cram a lot of people together, tensions flare.”

I think it’s only fair to point out that astronauts often spend months trapped together in ridiculously tight quarters, ships filled with Irish immigrants, wedged together like sardines, sailed days across the ocean and, as a child, our family of six somehow managed the yearly, eight hour trip to Sarasota, Fla., in a Ford Galaxy, driven by a frugal German who refused to turn on the air conditioner, and none of us, let me repeat, none of us, began attacking each other. Vomiting quietly into a bag from long exposure to interior temperatures of 90 degrees after having eaten a Stuckey’s Pecan log, yes, but physically attacking one another, no. 

It’s too easy to explain away such foul behavior because of a lack of space, or because a particularly brutal election has made it socially acceptable to spout the most vulgar things in public. The reason, in my view, is simply the result of big babies, often liquored up, who are used to the instant gratification that technology, in general, has brought into their lives and refuse to be in any way inconvenienced.

And if 1980s pop star Richard Marx can be brave enough, bless his little 5 foot 8 inch frame, to assist in a passenger take down as he did recently, then I guess this 6 foot ex sitcom actress can easily put some pinecone in a headlock. Which, actually, would be kind of cool.

Because you know somebody’ll film it and then I can add it to my resume, along with those stints on Match Game.