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The Air Travel Incident

August 1, 2003 – Every once in a while I hear about the glory days of air travel from one of the older folks. It is my understanding that a long time ago, people would get dressed up to take a plane ride and they were treated very well, regardless of the destination or class of ticket. I wonder if the change from that time to our current cattle-call air transport norm was gradual or like turning off a light switch once the airlines were no longer concerned with hospitality. It’s not just the airlines either… generally there is no accounting for the grouchiness of fellow travelers anymore.

I go through the same irritating concerns of most folks when traveling by air, but on one occasion I think I got the upper hand in terms of comfort (thanks to my genius infant son).

Flying from a small South Dakota town to Columbus, Ohio required a couple stops; one in Minneapolis and one in Detroit. On this particular occasion, on the flight between Minneapolis and Detroit, I was traveling with my son who was just under one, so he was a “lap-child”. We were given the window seat on the last row. This was as far from the door we could possibly get and would require a fair amount of hustling to make our next flight. When we sat down, we watched as the plane filled up pretty rapidly. Soon, by all appearances it looked as though the seat my son and I filled would have a vacancy right beside it. This is about the best thing that can happen with a parent traveling with a “lap-child”. Just as the traffic slowed down to nothing, and I was feeling fairly smug about the amount of space I had, a portly hand stopped the flight attendant from shutting the cabin door. In walked a very “full-figured” gentleman. Nothing against our large American brothers, but he was so huge, he had to perform the little sideways shuffle down the aisle as he was too wide to walk straight ahead.

Panic-stricken, I fruitlessly searched for another open seat somewhere that I failed to see earlier. You have to realize; I’m not exactly petite – 6 foot 1 at around 215 pounds with a one-year-old “lap-child” – so the seat isn’t exactly a Laz-y-Boy recliner for me in terms of space. Sure enough, my wasted efforts searching for the imaginary “other open seat” were halted by the gruff voice of the large gentleman asking the lady in the aisle to get up so he could sit in his ticketed seat – right beside me. He didn’t exactly sit down – it was more like he draped himself to varying degrees across the entire row. What didn’t fit in his assigned seat sort of “flowed” into the seats of his neighbors.

With the bulkhead jamming me in one shoulder, and a fleshy blanket warming the other, it looked to be a rough flight. How could it get any worse? Well, my son took care of that by choosing the most inconvenient time to perform some lower intestinal acrobats. Now we could add a baby’s particular fecal odor to our flying pleasure. Exasperated, I fought with the idea of waiting until the we landed to take care of the clean-up, but finally parental instincts took over and I performed an emergency diaperectomy right there in the seat (no easy feat with my 3 inches of hand clearance on either side, and the “lap-child” truly on the lap). Oddly enough, my son took a page out of a Stephen Hawking book and performed a quantum miracle – he condensed matter! Let me explain:

While changing the diaper, I noticed some additional elbowroom on my right. As the task continued it was unmistakable, I had lost the flesh-blanket. By all appearances, the gentleman didn’t care for the nasal disturbance, and shrunk in size before my very eyes (but not before the eyes of the lady in the aisle apparently – she was progressively being pushed into the next aisle). During the rest of the flight, I could move around a bit and was downright comfy!

As I said before, my son is a genius!

Submitted by Jason

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