They were headed down Route 91, almost to Deerfield, when he says, “You have your ID right.”

And she says … well, nothing at firs t… as she reviews her mental list, slowly realizing that no, she doesn’t have her ID. It’s in her purse. Her purse is on the kitchen table. She has her backpack though. That was the point, take the backpack not the purse. But the backpack doesn’t have the ID she needs to get on a plane.

They turn around at the Deerfield exit. He grew up with the credo that if you’re on time, you’re late, but turns around without a single word of blame. A look, maybe a look.

They get to Bradley with time to spare, so they think. They check their small luggage, but wait, there’s a problem. The first ticket agent shrugs and moves them to a second agent. The second agent gives them the bad news. There’s a new rule that baggage must be checked in 45 minutes before departure time. They missed their time frame by 1 minute, although really they didn’t have to check their “carry-on” luggage.

Like everyone else in all airports everywhere, she travels with a small rolling suitcase. Like everyone else, she can take it to the gate and find out there’s no more overhead storage because she’s in “Group 8,” which means there’s no more storage room on the plane. The excess is stashed somewhere below, yet you don’t pay the added checked-baggage fees. The only penalty is more waiting time.

Are you following this? Are you sure? Never mind, you will still get to the eventual point of this story, because the long and short of it is that they missed their ten o’clock flight. Now they were booked on the next one only three hours later. With new tickets, they still headed down to the gate, still thinking they’d have a chance. After all the plane was there and no one had boarded. At the gate, they tell their sob story. But no.

“The computers,” the gate keepers say. “Nothing we can do about it.”

Resigned, they watched their flight board and leave. They let family know about the later arrival. And they wait. They eat bad airport food. They shuffle through magazines, pace the corridors; they roll with it.

Then their one o’clock flight is delayed. They wait some more. Finally, they board and like everyone else traveling economy class, they sat like shriveled prunes in inhumanly narrow seats, fastened their seat belts and hoped that there were still a few airport traffickers employed.

In less than an hour their plane lands in Charlotte, half-way to Florida (not a direct flight) And because it’s late, the stewards make this announcement: “Would people who don’t have a connection in Charlotte please stay seated and let the people who do have connections get off first.”

As yours truly gathers her backpack and tries to make her own hasty retreat from the plane, she hears the flight attendant say to the pilot, “I can’t believe it. They’re doing it. I never thought they would. They are staying seated. You gotta see this!”

That they the passengers were doing it — staying seated or moving calmly with thank yous, smiles and obvious pride in one’s own civility. It was a sudden revelation of us at our people best. We were not, pushing, shoving, yelling, ignoring, sneering, cursing; we were sharing the common courtesy of time, space and personal needs. And, as the steward said to the pilot — you gotta see this.

P.S. A week later we read in the paper that a couple, very much like us, found that they too were machine-locked out of their flight. And they too made a beeline for the gate. They too were told “nothing doing.” Only they took a different path: they threw their coffee at the gate keepers, pushed past the attendants and made an aggressive run for their seats. They were arrested and alas never got to Charlotte.

Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield.