An Exercise in Avoiding Boredom

It started out with the usual quarrel: A woman was sitting in my aisle seat and couldn’t be convinced to move to her assigned (center) seat. I tried English, which didn’t help. She tried Cantonese, which didn’t help either. Sign language only lead to further confusion. Only when I started counting seats using A, B, C, … did she understand and I got my seat.

About 30 seconds after she had sat down, she decided to get up again and move places, leaving the seat next to me empty. Great I thought, but I was too slow and her friend one seat over had already moved into it. She took off her shoes and socks, put her legs on her old seat, and had her husband massage them. We hadn’t even taken off yet and he was already making love to her big toe.

The smell of my neighbor’s feet did not signal promise for the rest of the flight. I swear I heard an excited chicken rattling its cage somewhere a few rows further in the back. Oh my, it is another 14 hour flight in comedy class.

Invite me for a glass of red wine if you want to hear the rest of the story.