Can I Help Ya Help Ya Help Ya?

5.1.2017

On a long-haul flight across the country, if you're not in a row with family, you better hope you have one of the ends.  I flew from Atlanta to Los Angeles recently and had a middle seat.  Yep, I had every aspect of the middle seat blues.  For five hours.

First thing, I had to chuck my carry-on in the space above a row behind me.  Knowing full-well that upon arrival, my fellow passengers from the rows behind me will sprint to get ahead of everyone else  to deplane, I know what fun awaits me when we land, taxi and pull up to the gate.  I'll have to swim against the current or hope for help.  I'll get back to this.

Settling into my middle seat, I wasn't surprised when neither of my row mates said hello.  I was surprised to find that our row was the one row on the plane that had no window.  It was only bulkhead and the dude on my right who picked the window seat got no window.  If he was disappointed he didn't tell me.

So while we wait for the back of the plane to board and stow, my row sits in silence.  The woman to my left fiddles with a goddamn phone game that either had candy or fruit and she was trying to make or delete patterns of them.  I have a better imagination and don't have to have some mindless phone game to help pass the time.

The next fun thing was the flight crew yelling at one another because the gate agent let too many people board and some had the same seat.  How this happens is beyond me.  So guy gets up, gets his jacket from the closet and gets off.  Girl from back gets off.  Guy from back gets jacket guy's seat.  Airline employees wave receipts and softly yell at each other.  Girl from back gets back on.  Guy from back gets off.  Jacket guy gets back on and stows his jacket in the closet.  These three and two more continue this game of musical chairs for 10, 15, 20 more minutes.  Someone in the rows loudly complains.  Finally the shit is gotten together and seats are filled and we button up.

And we wait.  Cap tells us we're "third in line," but that takes another 20 or 30 minutes.  I'm facing four hours and 52 minutes of flight time in this goddamn middle seat and we're not burning any of it.  To boot, we have no window view to even have an idea of where we are on the tarmac.  It sucks.

Later, we're off.  Right guy is indeed Right:  He flips on FOX™ News.  And long ago he made it clear that both arm rests were his.  I began an insurrection and continued to assert my claim on part of it as we waited and departed and into now.  He was dogged, but I was determined.

The flight dragged on and the arm rest war was at stalemate:  I had my elbow fixed at the base of the seat and "casually" held onto "my part."  He kept "stretching" and trying to regain ground but I wasn't having it.  Sometimes, when he stretched, I grabbed up more.  He stopped stretching and even stopped playing with the seatback TV with his left hand.  I noticed how he awkwardly fumbled with the controls with his right.  He switched from FOX™ News to "Say Yes to the Dress" (huh?), back to FOX™ News and eventually settled on Star Wars™ Rogue whatever.  Wouldn't it be great if asshole FOX™ News-watching bastards couldn't watch Star Wars™ or PIXAR™ movies?  Whatever.

Meanwhile, the sandwich service was underway.  When the cart got near us, the woman to my left grabbed a menu from it, perused it, then put it back.  Um ... perhaps your row-mates might want a tasteless piece of crap sandwich, ya fucker?  Maybe?  I knew the menu was on the seatback TV so I already knew I was going to get a flat turkey sandwich but seriously, how fucking rude.

I ate the piece of crap sandwich, donned ear plugs and an old Lufthansa™ eye mask and tried to sleep.  Sometimes on flights just as I doze off I TWITCH once and wake.  I think I did this a few times and hope I annoyed the two asswipes in my row.

With a couple hours to go, I abandoned the napping and switched on my seatback TV, browsed the movies and settled on "Arrival."  I had shitty, in-ear headphones (alas, my Bose, over-ear, noise-cancelling super 'phones were in my bag over the head of someone behind me), so I could barely hear what turned out to be a movie that made more sense only if you clearly heard every word.  Oh well.

During the movie, I came to understand that Right guy discovered my glasses case in my right cargo pocket of my cargo shorts.  He didn't like it.  It was in his space.  I had the "window" seat, I'd fucking scoot over right.  Cram myself into it cuz I could.  Since he already established he wasn't cramming anything (with the armrest war), he only slid his hand between his leg and my glasses case repeatedly.  First, I think to figure out what it was, and second to maybe nudge it a little back toward me.  Of course, this required him to move his arm off the arm rest.  So when he did, I snagged more real estate.  He was slow to discover this by the time I had most of it.  This did not make him happy and he squirmed.  I really enjoyed it.  I thought for sure that he would complain to me, and was more and more sure every time he slid his hand over.  But he never did.  Ha ha.  I win.

Or so I thought.  Sure, we finally made it to LA.  Sure we didn't taxi long and even better, a guy behind me snagged my bag and handed it to me.  Upon deplaning, I found Los Angeles International to be bursting at the seams:  Every seat filled. People huddling around every electrical outlet recharging their phones.  People sleeping on the floor.  I didn't know why it was so busy, and I didn't care.

Then it took 45 minutes for our bags to reach carousel #3.  THEN I found the terminals to be as busy outside as they were inside.  Uber™ said my driver was .01 miles away and estimated 32 minutes away because of the traffic.  That driver and the next canceled on me.  The next Uber ™driver called and said I should try later because he was stuck.  I switched to Lyft™ and got a ride 11 minutes later. 

So anyway, my travel that day was lousy, but not a capital "B" bitch.  It happens.


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