Today my travels took me on a three-leg trip across the country. I normally don’t mind long trips, unless I have to wake up early and am surrounded by foolishness. Both factors were in effect today.
I have a hard time sleeping on airplanes. Maybe it’s the head-flopping; maybe it’s the fact that you are practically leaning forward the whole time. Perhaps I am too much of a self-monitor to feel free to lean on my neighbor. Whatever the case, I have a very hard time sleeping upright—especially in a moving vehicle.
Imagine my unmitigated delight at finding myself dozing off to the strains of Conga (Gloria Estefan circa:1980)(Yeah, it’s old.) I leaned my seat gently back so I was marginally comfortable, closed my eyes and proceeded to dream of my wife Limpy running on the beach.
“I want to rub my hands in your hair,” she says.
“Really?” I say.
“Yes and kiss you in the warm tropical rain,” her eyes hint.
“Hmmm….” my dream-state self thinks to himself.
Then she says, “Sir, can you put your seat forward.”
“What?” I say
“Your seat—I need you to put it forward so this gentleman can get out.”
I open my eyes to find a foul-breathed, make-up laden woman with her flight-attendant face uncomfortably close to my face. She’s urging me to put my seat forward. ‘We must be landing,’ I think to my self.
Not so. Apparently the woman seated directly behind me was asleep in the aisle seat. The man in the window seat needed to get up and wander around but he couldn’t get over the sleeping woman. So instead of waking the woman directly behind me so the man could exit his seat, I was the one who they woke. As the man climbed gently over the sleeping woman, he woke her up anyway.
It angers me that I was taken away from my Limpy dream so a man could try to avoid waking a person whom he woke anyway. Like my friend Miss Nemesis, I should write a disgruntled letter explaining my dissatisfaction to the offending airline. But, as I believe I have mentioned before, I am a colossal pansy and I will not be writing any such letter. Maybe it’s because I like people. Maybe it’s because I am afraid of losing all my skymiles. Maybe it’s just because I am a pansy.
All I know is that it’s going to be a great day. Yeah, just ducky.