I flew cross country yesterday. I was dreading it because a last minute booking had landed me a middle seat. I usually prefer aisle because I have to pee so much.
I get to my seat, and the aisle seat and part of my seat are occupied by this fat middle aged white woman. What a piece of work she was. I put down the armrest to claim my full seat, and she stops ladyspreading enough so that I actually can claim my entire seat. Woohoo! But then she puts her arm on the armrest. Dude, don't you know the rule that the middle seat dweller gets the armrests?
Thirty seconds later, she pulls out a case with wipes and offers me one.
"No, I'm good." I reply.
"They're for washing the seatback trays. They don't wash them you know."
"No thanks, I'm still good." I reply.
Then she says to her friend "I'm so full. I don't know if I'll need that salad." Actually lady, it's exactly the salad that you *do* need. Within the hour, she pulls out an Almond Joy Snack Pack and gets a Sprite (at 10:15am) from the beverage cart. I guess she wasn't full after all. The fact that she offered me a wipe and not a handful of Almond Joy Snack Pack mix, well that was a bit of a tearjerker in and of itself.
But I luck out and the window dweller doesn't show, so I move over to the window. I've never flown across the whole country in the winter time, and damn, what a beautiful view of snow covered Mt. Rainier then the snow covered Rockies.
She soon pulls down the middle seat tray (and without washing it), sets up her ipad on it to watch tv. Then she plugs her phone into the middle seat jack, and plops down her water and other belongings into the middle seat (technically MY seat, mind you.) And then proceeds to fall asleep, snoring loudly for two hours. Well she would have slept more but at that point I had to pee so badly that I awoke her from her slumber. I purposely did not drink a drop of liquid for the entire five hour flight but at the three hour mark my old man bladder had had enough.
I also snickered mightily when the person in the middle seat in front of us adjusted his seat and her unattended ipad went flying to the ground.
After getting off the plane at DCA and (of course) stopping to pee again, I passed her as she slowly lumbered down the hall, loudly complaining to her friend about this and that.
Oh, as it turns out she did need the salad, wolfing it down after I had awakened her.