Disappointment At 30,000 Feet

I’m away on my semi-annual trip to visit with family on the east coast. And while I don’t usually give out the top secret details of my personal comings and goings, this time something occurred on the flight that, while not life-altering, was depressing enough to make me consider walking across the country next time.

The whole thing is a classic study in shattered expectations.  Having been in the first group of passengers that boarded the plane, I sat there watching as those who followed proceeded down the aisle to find a seat.  Now this is where a speculation game begins with most travelers.  You carefully study each person who approaches, and wonder which of them will end up sitting in the seat next to you.  Will it be the one with that grouchy look on his face, or that overweight woman who will unknowingly poach part of your seat with her overhanging girth, or that rather suspicious looking guy you can picture being a lunatic terrorist who will end up holding a nail file to your carotid artery as he tries to hijack the plane?

Anyway, as I was conducting my own personal “profiling” of each individual, down the aisle walked an absolutely stunning young woman in her mid twenties.  She was trim and petite, with dark long hair and a smile that seemed to illuminate her face.  Now, beautiful females like her have been on my flights in the past, but each has always ended up walking past me to sit somewhere where I can’t even admire her from afar.  So I figured this would be the same deal.  I mean, why would an attractive young chick purposely sit next to an old fart like me?  To my surprise, however, she stopped.  And whether it was because she just couldn’t see any other available seats, or she noticed the “Oh, PLEASE” expression on my face, she placed her bag in the overhead compartment and sat down next to me.

Now, if any of you romance novel readers are about to visualize a steamy fantasy, you’d better take a cold shower before you continue reading.  At my age, the only realistic steam that might have materialized is if the galley coffee machine blew up after a filter gasket failure.  Despite that, my expectations were that I would get to spend a few hours with an attractive female chatting companion, while all the young guys on the plane sat there wishing they were me.  As it turned out, we exchanged a few amiable words when she first sat down, but by the time we had taken off, she was sound asleep.  So much for conversation, or anything else for that matter.

As I looked over at her, there were a number of very interesting things about her body.  One was that the more deeply she slept, the more limber it became.  And it wasn’t long before she slumped to her right and morphed onto the shoulder of an older woman sitting in the aisle seat.  Immediately the lady jabbed her arm with an elbow, causing the girl to wake with a start, then readjust her sleeping position.  But as she faded away again, she slowly drooped back onto the lady’s shoulder a second time.  This time she got a sharp shot to the ribs, and awoke to a “dirty look” that could only grace the face of an irritated senior citizen.

This was good.  After all, “Sleeping Beauty” had been rebuffed twice by elbow strikes and a scalpel-like senior stare, so falling asleep again seemed out of the question.  That said, let the conversation begin… right?  Wrong!!  The dark-haired damsel quickly fell into another coma-like stupor.  This time, however, she slumped to the left and her head landed on MY shoulder.  Wow, with our cheeks only inches apart, my mind began to wander backwards in time to when this sort of configuration would not only be pleasant, but reserved for someone with whom I had some “history.”  Anyway, it didn’t take long for the daydreaming to end as I realized this dainty female’s head weighed about twenty-five pounds, not to include the added downward pressure of gravity and sleep-induced dead weight.

Now, I am truly a gentleman in the old-school sense of the word.  So rather than poke the girl as had the senior on her right, I sat there patiently waiting for the plane to hit an air pocket or something “sudden” that might cause the girl to wake up.  But it never happened, and her head continued to bore into my shoulder for the next hundred or so miles.  Slowly my right arm began to fall asleep, and my back started hurting because I couldn't adjust my sitting position.  A number of times the older lady on the isle looked over and gestured that I should use her strategy and  employ body blows to wake the girl up, but I really didn’t have the heart to resort to physical violence.  So, for what seemed like a lifetime, I endured the anvil weight of the sleeping damsel’s head, as well as her muffled snoring and strands of a.w.o.l hair that kept tickling my right ear.

I guess the greatest indignity occurred as we were making the final descent into Fort Lauderdale.  The young lady woke up, yawned, and after righting herself in her seat looked over at me as if to say, “Oh, are YOU still here?”  Then she began fixing her makeup and straightening up her clothes, never once saying “thank you” for my supporting role her comfortable flight.  Truthfully,  I felt cheated and violated.  And while I’m convinced I would have made a superb chatting companion, all I ended up being was a vintage head rest with a very sore shoulder due to impaired circulation.  What a gigantic disappointment!! 

Anyway, I will NEVER allow this type of indignity to happen again, you can bet your boarding pass on that.  Next time a fine looking female appears to be interested in occupying the seat next to me, I’m going to tell her I’m holding it for someone else, then invite a guy who looks like a terrorist to sit there.  At least he won’t fall asleep on my shoulder, and might even talk to me until it’s time for him to pull out his nail file and hold it to my throat.