I can hardly believe that it is already the fourth birthday for this paper and this column.

Who would have thought when we wrote about the kind of wannabes who keep tiny white rat-like dogs that they even ferry in their handbags to those bourgeoisie Sunday events that involve blankets and the consumption of expensive drinks, that this city has so many types of wannabes, if one keeps a keen eye, that two hundred articles later, we’d still be discovering this common sub-species without the need to ever repeat oneself? We’ll pop the bubbly later.

Last weekend it was time to discover ‘wannabes’ of the aerial kind – the people who give the good folks of Kenya Aviation a fair amount of BP and whom the air stewardesses at the end would want to tell – ‘Asante bwana/bibi for travelling with us. But would you please choose another airline next time?’

First of all, don’t bother going to a small local airport to fuss about how your ‘online’ ticket booking has not worked out. Just do things the old fashioned way – like printing out your ticket and physically going to check in at the counter, like other normal passengers? Fussing about ‘online’ bookings is only for the wannabe expatriate types that the Partington across the page talks about weekly.

Then there are those wannabes who still act as if air travel has not been around for the last 115 years.

They want to post a boast on social media about ‘going to JKIA’ complete with that locational red hot air balloon icon, and then keep twitting silly wannabe things like ‘now at the waiting lounge.’ Some even post a picture on Instagram of their passport after it has been stamped at the airport.

Lookie you here – even my friend Ezekiel Mutua repented of these sins and stopped the travel braggadocio, so if you still do that, you are soooo not in 2017. That, you wannabe, is just meh! and very ‘shagsmodos’, so stop!

Then you will find that wannabe woman at the check in counter who wants to argue with the airline lady about her luggage which is like twenty three kilos, yet the limit – even on the ticket – clearly states ‘all baggage above ten kilos will be charged.’ She will complain long and loud and bitterly about what ‘thieves’ that airline has become, and you want to say ‘are you illiterate or just cannot estimate weight?’

Then there is the fat fellow in front of you at that security frame who puts his hand luggage through the machine, tries to go through the frame and there is a LOUD bleep and a flash of red light. He then empties his pocket of three mobile phones and Shs 240 in twenty bob coins (mbona amebeba coin za mbao mingi hivyo, kwani yeye ni wannabe air makanga)? Bleep! He takes off his belt with its huge metal buckle. Bleep! He reluctantly removes his metal tipped cowboy boots.

Stop holding up the line at security, you silly wannabe! Accept that Osama bin Laden and his Middle Eastern bros fundamentally changed the world, especially the way security at the airport operates and strip, go through the machine, and then dress on the other side.

I once saw this Eastern European dude at the security check asked to open his hand luggage.

He did and was asked to remove a large bottle of Kenya Cane that he had snuggly packed.

‘You cannot fly with liquid,’ said the Kenyan security guy.

‘But is souvenir!’ protested our comrade from Poland or Bulgaria.

‘You either leave it behind or drink it here,’ said the security guy, with that smug wannabe look such folks sometimes have, like a man who has just taken a good shit and is feeling rather pleased with life.

‘Okay,’ said comrade, ‘I drink!’

And he opened the cap and throatily gulped ALL the cane spirit before going through the security, leaving the security guy’s mouth open in shock. I later saw Comrade staggering on the runway ahead of me as we went to board the plane.

Once aboard, especially on cheap local airlines, just eat those hard little biscuits that the airline ladies call ‘snacks’ and don’t whine too much. What did you expect for Shs 5 400 one way? A six course meal from Kempinski?

When the aero-plane encounters turbulence, that is not the time to share with your terrified neighbour, a middle-aged woman who is flying for the first time, the story of the latest series of ‘Air Crash Investigation,’ telling her ‘the plane in that episode was shaking just like this one is, before it broke into bits mid-air.’

And when you land, please don’t block the aisle to take a selfie of yourself ati ‘#SafeLandingManenos.’

tonyadamske@gmail.com