Advice from the Airspace

I travel a lot. I’m currently writing this flying over what I assume is Oklahoma. Or maybe Missouri.

When I lived in Ohio there was a running joke at my work that I never had more than 2 days of vacation days stored in my account and every Friday morning when I walked in, hair wet from my swim with XXL large coffee in hand, looking exhausted but happy, the front office ladies would ask me, “where you flying to this weekend!?” To which I would respond “Florida” or “California” or “Colorado” or, on one occasion, “Argentina!” and another, “Finland!”. They stopped being surprised after about my fourth trip in a single month. The key to staying happy in Dayton was to leave Dayton – as often as possible. (No offense).

And while I love New Mexico with all my heart, my family is in Missouri, Florida and New England and my best friends are in California and Ohio. And my heart is all the places I’ve never been. So my Southwest credit card rarely has a chance to even cool off before I’m digging it out again and buying another flight.

I love everything about traveling. I love the airports I love the unknown I love exploring. I just LOVE it.

Except…the anxiety of the airplane seating.

I am the opposite of my best friend Julie, who I’m pretty sure has never stepped off an airplane with less than 5 business cards, 3 job offers, 2 dates, and a free ride to her destination.

I sit down, shut up, put my headphones in and pray no one speaks to me.

I’m not sure if it’s God’s way of making sure I don’t ever get TOO happy in my life or he just likes to see my reaction, but more often than not I get the pleasure of being seated next to the most undesirable human in the airspace.

And I’m not talking about being seated next to the crying baby – honestly that doesn’t bother me. I think by virtue of my profession I’m immune to screaming infants getting under my skin, and I don’t think I even hear it anymore. I’m the person who lets the toddler rip the pages of her magazine and I absolutely make the silly faces through the crack in the seat in front of me to see them smile.  

I’m talking about the teenager who reeks of pot and Svedka who, before throwing up in the vomit bag tucked in the seatback pocket, insists on showing me 45 minutes of “rad” snowboarding videos from his Colorado trip.

I’m talking about the obese guy wearing the YuGiOh shirt and long beard bedazzled with bits of his breakfast sandwich who, before grooming himself for the first time in his life by picking ear wax out of his ear and inspecting it closely for what I assume fleas, literally TAKES HIS CAT OUT OF IT’S CARRIER AND HOLDS IT MIDFLIGHT. To which the cat freaks out because what else do cats do, and refuses to be put back into the carrier by spreading its legs, clawing up his arms, and hissing.

I’m talking about the old man who falls asleep on my shoulder while I uncomfortably wedge myself into the armpit of the poor woman next to me. And when I did that, he fell onto my back and drooled before waking up and farting.

I’m talking about the woman who, about 5 minutes after take off, took out a giant roll of fresh salami and pub cheese and was clawing chunks off the salami with her fingernails to make little sandwiches. For TWO. HOURS. It was so pungent I smelled salami everywhere I went for a week.

But I have to admit, I’ve been “that person” too. Not exactly like the pothead or catman, but pretty darn close. Travel can bring out the worst in people.

One time on about my third weekend in a row traveling I was heading to St. Louis to see my family. I got in late the night before and I chose sleep over showering, so in addition to being a red eye zombie, I also was sweating and had some major body odor and greasy hair. The morning of my 7 am flight I literally sat in the middle of my living room with my suitcase and cried a little bit, trying to decide if I was REALLY going to make the hour drive to the airport at 4 am to get on another flight.

By God’s grace I made it to the airport (I blasted show tunes and the air conditioner on my face to keep me awake – a ruthless but effective method) and I’m shocked to this day I didn’t get pulled aside in TSA for special screening because I looked and smelled like a homeless girl who had a lot of knives shoved in her body cavities.

I barely made it into my seat before my head slumped forward and I started simultaneously drooling and snoring. One of those deep sleeps where you wake up and you literally haven’t the foggiest notion as to who you are or where you are. I felt like Robin Williams in Jumanji: “What year is it!?”

I briefly woke up when the flight attendant came around.

My order of survival operations goes like this: snacks, sleep, wine. So my brain heard her say, “snacks” and without opening my eyes I extended my hand out for the bag, she placed it in my hand, and I proceeded to open the bag and start chewing with one eye closed and one eye opened.

Somewhere around the third mini pretzel I fell back into coma and woke up to which I can only assume was a good time later with a pretzel stuck to the outside of my lip, a pretzel in my open hand, and the bag opened and spilled out on my lap. With only one eye open and head still hanging down I shoved the lip pretzel into my mouth with the back of my hand because I seemed to have lost my fine motor skills, and made the mistake of slowly rotating my head like a porcelain doll in a horror film to the guy next to me. Still with just one eye open. Who, to my horror -not at the time because I think I was still asleep, but when I look back on it, to my horror- was staring at me, mouth slightly open. For who knows how long.

Even though my brain was screaming “Look away!” I just stared back like a dead shark. My body was processing information about 3 minutes behind my brain. He slowly reached for the pretzels in his seat back pocket and, like the way you hand food to a rabid street dog, slid them over to me.

“…..Do you want these?”

After a 10 second lapse, with excessive effort I moved my hand and took them without saying anything, clutched them to my chest, closed my eye, and immediately fell back asleep. I woke up when we bounced onto the runway with more unchewed pretzels sitting in my mouth.

I’m sure he still thinks of me from time to time.

***

I’ve come up with some tips to avoid sitting next to people I mentioned above and sometimes, people like myself. I implement these when flying on airlines such as Southwest, where you can have some degree of control as to who sits next to you.

First, when you choose your perfect seat and look behind you, start looking down the line of people coming in and group the individuals into “unacceptable” or “acceptable”.

On my list, unacceptable people include those with cat carriers, any variation of eagle or wolves howling at the moon t-shirts, excessive face tattoos, beards extending beyond the sternum, the guy who is on every flight who cracks jokes and talks way too loud for a 6 am flight, the woman who is sweating, struggling to squeeze down the aisle, and somehow snuck on 5 carry ons, and preteen boys of any variation. I also avoid the children traveling alone because I inevitably get sucked into coloring or playing their Gameboy with them and I always end up giving them all my snacks and feel personally responsible for their wellbeing.

If I spot a large group of highschoolers in matching sweatshirts traveling to a tournament or band concert of any kind in the gate area, I just change my flight altogether.

 Second, when the unacceptables are about 3 rows ahead of you, you avoid eye contact, look ticked off, start crying or picking a pimple on your arm, or look REALLY busy digging into your bag. If you can spread your legs out and look as large as possible that works too. I’ve also faked being asleep. I’m pretty sure sneezing and snotting a lot would work too….Even better if you’re clutching a handful of dirty tissues. To do this you really have to commit to it.

If it’s a flight that’s not full, you can do this seemingly forever until no one sits next to you. It’s a little trickier if it’s a full flight.

Obviously, given my track record, this does not work every time. But it’s always worth a shot.

If the flight is full and you know you will have a neighbor, the only way of getting a desirable person to sit next to you is momentarily glancing at them and in your head think desperately, “PLEASE don’t sit next to me. PLEASE don’t sit next to me” To which they will respond by sitting next to you. 60% of the time it works every time.

For this particular flight I used the method of looking super busy digging in my bag, avoiding eye contact, and just for good measure, I put on my very best resting bitch face. Which is basically just my face. I’m currently in an exit row with an open seat next to me.

Living the dream!

Happy flying,

Katie