The Columnist Manifesto

I was sitting on a plane in seat 3B, doing a crossword puzzle while waiting for the boarding process to be completed so we could take off. The man ticketed for the seat in front of me made the following, rather tired joke about his assigned place. Pointing to the empty seat, he asked the man in 2A:

"2B? Or not 2B?"

This flash of wit would not have been blogworthy, but for the fact that at that exact moment, I was reading the following crossword puzzle clue for a four-letter word:

Yorick's skull, e.g.

Pretty wild, huh?

The answer, by the way, is "prop." And we were on a propeller plane.