Flight Of The Internationals!

OK, this was one of those flights.
It was on the Lunchbox. I was already having what I call a Bad Physics Day. You've had them. where you throw something into the trash can and it bounces back out even though you can clearly see that there was nothing there to deflect it. You just can't prove to someone else that there was nothing there to deflect it is what, and the conspiracy of it, along with the insane concentration of such events, is what makes a B.P.D. I had already kicked myself in the head during my morning Arizona Boot Check (where you rack your shoe on the ground so that all the scorpions fall out), dumped all my Plane Cheesies out of the serving basket, and put hot coffee on myself during turbulence (another B.P.D. qualifying event: there is a button about the size of a nickel that makes the coffee come out of the spigot, and it's guarded by a plastic rim of imposing size... so how I pressed the inside part of that thing when I was tossed scarecrowlike against it is beyond me).
So... the rules say that the people sitting in the exit row must speak English. When I briefed them, they nodded, and something stuck in my craw about it, and I pressed them. "Don't speak English!" they cried in a thick German accent. "Deutch!" they said. So I moved them, and it took a little time because I couldn't explain why I was moving them. I said danka a few times, and they said it back while they moved. A lady in another seat said, "Excuse me, I think those people there speak German," and I filed away the location of the folk she was pointing at. Then during flight, I decided to try to explain why I moved the people, so that they wouldn't think I did it just to be a jerk. I found the people the lady had pointed at, and asked, "Do you speak German?" They nodded. Then when I launched into what I wanted them to interpret, they cried, "Don't speak English!" in a thick German accent. So, acknowledging that the lady had been indeed correct about them speaking German, but that they were going to be of no use to me, I nodded and said danka a few times. Then a guy one seat away said, in a thick New York accent, "Dude, they're speaking Dutch."
So I felt stupid for the rest of the flight. New York Boy was right there to roll his eyes at me every time I started to feel smarter, and the lady who'd pointed out the 'interpreters' in the first place kept glaring at me as if it was my fault her idea hadn't gone anywhere. Yup, sometimes things go well, and sometimes they do the other thing.