In the Air

Okay, so these is a large lady sitting next to me on the plane. I'd guess her to be about 280-300 pounds depending on her muscle content. No matter her weight, she was large enough that she did not have the arm rest down when I first got to my seat. I didn't know if she didn't have it down because it wouldn't have been comfortable for her or if she just didn't know it was there. (She definitely wasn't Delta savvy, as I later found out, so it's hard to make a guess on how flight savvy she was.) I was concerned that the arm rest wasn't down because it wouldn't be comfortable for her as she was already spilling over onto my seat, so I just left it up. Ordinarily I would have put it down, but I figured I would be nice in this case and let her decide. After I settle in (get my book out and put my backpack under the seat in front of me) I offer her some gum. (I find it helps my ears adjust during take-off and landing) She accepts and we just wait for the take-off. She makes no motion to put the arm rest down.

Each seat has its own video display on the back of the headrest, so I begin to fiddle with it a little bit after the safety video and take-off. It was sort've hard to navigate at first since I'd never used one before, but I'm usually pretty good about figuring things out. My neighbor's husband (presumably) is telling her how she can turn on the reading light if she needs it by touching a button on the display and then touching the reading light button. She finally gets it and the light goes on... I'm used to this, planes usually have your reading light above the other person, but angled so that it shines down on you... only thing is with our row some wires seem to have gotten crossed because the light above me didn't go on, the light above her went on and shined down on me! She turns it off and tries it again, same thing. I tried my light button and sure enough, the light above my head turns on and shines down on her. Okay, mental note: Wait until you're above the clouds to read your book, because you'd have to ask your neighbor to turn on the light if you want to read otherwise. (I may have made a joke to her about that or said something along the lines of, let me know if you want to read something.) For some reason, she tries the light for a 3rd time... okay lady, clearly it's not going to work as it should, just give it up.

I started fiddling with the touch screen, saw that I'd have to pay for the movies or HBO series, decided against those. I saw there was some satellite TV, but I didn't have my headphones out yet so I couldn't hear anything. The lady sitting next to me didn't have any headphones either, but that didn't stop her from watching CNN. When we got to cruising altitude, I reached down and got out my iPod and headphones, I had planned to just listen to music and read, but I thought I'd try and see if maybe there was something good on the TV first. I plugged my headphones into the armrest (I was in a window seat, so mine plugged into the one between me and the window, not the arm rest that was still up.) and flipped through the TV channels. There wasn't much I felt like watching, so I decided to check out the radio stations... I couldn't get any of those to work, there was just NO sound. I fiddled with the volume even though I could hear the TV fine, but just couldn't get the radio to work. At this point it was like the airplane knew how to calm me down. I think it was trying to say, chill... your suitcase is fine, the lady next to you is nice, and you don't really want to listen to the radio... just try to relax, there's nothing you can do about it now anyway. You see, I didn't get a chance to update my iTunes and iPod for the trip and I was curious about Miley Cyrus' album. The airplane had tons of CDs to listen to and Miley's CD was one of them to choose from! YAY! I got to listen to it without having to buy it, so it was my saving grace. And Halo by Beyonce helped calm me down.

Most of the rest of the flight was uneventful, except 2 things stand out in my mind. First, the lady next to me bought headphones from the stewardess, but then couldn't figure out where to plug them in at, so I told her they were on the arm rest that was up. I wasn't sure if she was still going to leave the arm rest up and just plug them in there, or if she was going to lower it to put her headphones in. She lowered it about halfway, plugged them in and then went back to the screen... I was shocked! This was really not comfortable! Finally when she settled on something to watch, she lowered the arm rest all the way *whew*... unfortunately this sort've squeezed her in the seat a little more, so her thigh kind've billowed out towards me and I needed to squeeze a little more towards the window so I wouldn't feel like I was sitting on her.

The second thing that stands out towards me is that we were totally skipped from the steward when they came around to see if anyone wanted anything to drink. This was the second time they passed through, since it was a long flight. I had an empty cup and a half filled cup of water. She had an empty cup. I don't know what the people in the row next to us had, but our whole row was completely skipped. They asked the people in front of us and the people behind us, but not us. The lady turns to me and says, what's wrong with us? Why skip us?! I had no idea what to say to her, I was just as dumbfounded. Her husband ended up getting up and asking the steward for 2 ginger ales (one for her and one for me... how nice!). I thanked them both. When the steward came with our drinks he claims that he saw our cups and thought we had drinks... umm... too bad the empty cups had TRASH IN THEM, so they are CLEARLY drink-less! Granted, I had some water in a cup on my tray, my neighbor didn't! Anyways, it was a harmless mistake that got rectified, so no harm there. The rest of the flight was fine, listening to music, sometimes watching TV, and generally just being squished up against the window. :)

Then, we landed in Atlanta. It was easy enough to look up and see I needed to go to terminal D (can't remember if they call them terminals there of if there is another name for them at the Atlanta airport), so I followed the crowd downstairs to the tram and got off at D, made my way back upstairs and headed to my gate... which happened to be the furthest one... of course! Oh! I didn't mention that I stopped to pee after I got off the flight. I bring this up because the Atlanta airport is SOOOO CLEAN!! It was amazing. Like seriously, you could totally eat in the bathroom and not be grossed out... well... except for just knowing that you're eating in a bathroom... but it's the cleanest public restroom I've ever been in. Seriously in the airport there were people cleaning up everywhere. It's like, oh, someone threw something in the trash bin, time to change the bag! Okay, maybe not that fast, but still very clean. So, I make it down to my gate and don't see my flight listed, so I go to the screens and see they've changed my gate, to one I've already walked by... of course! I make my way to the new gate and go sit down when some people get up to board the flight before mine. That's when I meet a sweet old lady!

She was so nice and very chatty I might add. She was heading to Texas from North Carolina for her... get this... her 55TH HIGH SCHOOL REUNION!!!! So, I'm not kidding when I say "old lady." She said that last she heard, 300 people had RSVP'd.

...to be continued...