Mile High

Last week there was an incident on a plane involving the eternal conflict between the God-given right to recline one’s seat vs. the Constitutional right to have leg room. A woman reclined her seat but the man behind her had placed a device that prevented the seat from moving back. They started an argument, somebody threw a drink in somebody’s face and they had to divert the flight and kick these people off.

We can have a harmless, fun debate over who was right and who was wrong but it’s a trick question. Both these idiots were wrong. They inconvenienced hundreds of people because they couldn’t conduct themselves like adults.

I’m ambivalent about the reclining debate. I have long legs but don’t need much leg room. I drive with my knees about an inch from the dashboard because I’m uncomfortable sitting farther back and stretching my arms to reach the steering wheel. Unless the seat is actually touching me, I will never ask for more leg room in the back seat.

Despite my brief flirtation with first class, I am very low maintenance on an airplane. As long as the plane doesn’t crash, I’m good. I just sit and read and listen to music and wait for my arrival. I’ve also been remarkably lucky over the years and have almost no flying horror stories. I only once had a flight canceled but got on the next one a few hours later. The woman at the gate thanked me for not yelling at her when they rescheduled my flight because some customers had been so nasty. Why would I yell at someone trying to help me who holds my travel plans in her hands? It’s not her fault there was bad weather. I was convinced at the time that they kind of moved me ahead on the standby list just because I was polite. I’m pretty much the airlines’ dream.

There were a few things in recent years that have annoyed me on planes but not enough to complain to the other passengers. Years ago I took a red eye home from Los Angeles on the theory that I could multitask by sleeping for six hours and then get home refreshed. I had a few drinks at the sad airport bar so I could fall asleep. No dice. I was wide awake. It didn’t help that the woman next to me was playing with a Rubik’s Cube all night (this was actually a few years ago and not 1983). The clicking of the cube was surprisingly loud, even over the sound of the engines. But I would have felt like an idiot telling her the Rubik’s Cube was keeping me awake. On our way home from Florida, I was trying to sleep and the woman next to me was flipping through and refolding every page of her newspaper 20 times and spent 15 minutes situating herself and it was too loud for me to sleep. That also wasn’t that big a deal since I only needed a nap and not a full night’s sleep. Other than that, I’m low maintenance.

In addition to this seat reclining prevention device, they also sell some type of sling you can wrap around the seat in front of you and around your own seat so nobody can see your face. I guess this offers you some privacy but I would think sitting on a plane with a big sling would just draw attention to you. People would want to see if it’s some celebrity who doesn’t want to be noticed but when they peek behind the sling, they’d say, “No, it’s just some asshole.” There’s also a plaid seat cover you can wrap over your seat, I guess to dress it up because you’re such a wacky individual and want to show off your creative quirkiness. If the person sitting next to me used this thing, they would have to divert the plane because I’d be laughing too hard.