Stuck in the middle seat
On any flight on any day, you’ve probably been seated next to someone undesirable — the person who had an obvious aversion to deodorant or the neighbor who continued to bark into your ear even after you donned headphones.
Your de facto traveling companion may have commandeered both armrests, brazenly clipped his toenails, snored, worn too much perfume or not enough clothing, or laughed obnoxiously while watching a movie.
Having worked more than 7,000 flights during my 30year career as a flight attendant and having flown hundreds of more flights as a passenger, I thought I had seen every type of challenging seat mate.
But on a recent trip from Hong Kong to Bali, Indonesia, I experienced a new and more interesting hybrid: the family that travels together but chooses to sit apart.
I boarded the flight in Hong Kong knowing I had been assigned 42B, a maincabin middle seat. Let’s face it: Nobody likes the middle seat, unless of course the adjacent seats are unoccupied.
When I approached my row, I saw a small, elderly woman sitting in 42A, the window. A middle-aged woman was perched in 42C.
She smiled when I gestured to my seat and stood up, allowing me to sit. I said hello. She responded in kind. Her response revealed an accent that prompted me to ask, “Are you Brazilian?”
“No,” she said, “I am Portuguese.”
“Oh, I speak a bit of Portuguese,” I replied.
“Ahhh,” she said, her eyes lighting up. She leaned forward, craned her neck and spoke to the elderly woman sitting in the window seat.
“Mama … he speaks Portuguese.”
The elderly woman spoke in a rapid-fire burst I couldn’t understand. I did understand, however, that they were mother and daughter.
Obviously, there had been a seating mistake. The flight was full, and these family members were being forced to sit apart.
I offered to swap seats with the mother, but she could not understand my broken Portuguese. I turned to the daughter, but my language skills failed again.
Then the daughter turned around and spoke to a man in the row behind us. Turns out, the twentysomething man was the middle-aged woman’s son, the elderly woman’s grandson. He spoke perfect English. “My grandmother prefers to sit at the window,” he said, apologetically. “My mother likes the aisle.”
“Oh, OK,” I replied, noting how odd it seemed that mother and daughter would rather a strange man sit between them when they could be sitting together.
After takeoff, I plugged my headset into the in-flight entertainment jack and began watching “Allied,” a World War II thriller starring Brad Pitt.
Here I was on a threeweek vacation, flying to my favorite place on Earth, watching a great movie and sipping an ice-cold Coke. As a kid growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I never dreamed life could be so good.
Suddenly, the movie soundtrack seemed to switch from English to Portuguese.
Brad Pitt’s dialogue, I soon realized, was being drowned out by the voices of my gesticulating seat mates. The two women were engrossed in a spirited conversation. The mother’s voice blared in my left ear, and the daughter’s voice thundered in my right.
I was being bombarded in stereo.
I removed my headset and turned to the mother, then the daughter, certain they would grasp the breach of etiquette. They did not.
Their conversation continued as if I did not exist. This, I realized, is why the son chose to sit behind them.
Frustrated, I offered once again to switch seats. My offer was met with silence. Beautiful silence. But moments after I restarted my movie, their conversation started again.
Sandwiched between the two irrepressible conversationalists, I began to lose patience. The airplane cabin is public space. Passengers certainly have the right to engage in loud, protracted conversations with a traveling companion. But not when that companion refuses to sit next to them.
As is the case with every relationship, seat mates need to compromise. Which is exactly what I did.
Instead of trying in vain to watch the movie, I snatched the unread newspaper from my seat back pocket and opened it completely. Shook the newspaper so the pages fully extended. Held it in a wide reader’s grip.
This impromptu blockade sealed off mother from daughter, thus ending their conversation until we landed on the beautiful island of Bali.