Musings from the Middle Seat...

I was on a redeye flight from San Francisco to Newark the other night. I had booked a seat in Economy Plus in the exit row, but when I got to my gate they told me an error had occurred in their system and my seat had been reassigned to a middle seat at the back of the plane. The gate agent rebooked my seat in Economy Plus. When I boarded the plane, there was someone sitting in my seat. He was booked in that seat too. I asked the flight attendant for help and she told me that they must have double booked our seat. She said there were no seats left in Economy Plus. I had to sit in a middle seat next to two sweaty fat guys at the back of the plane near the lavatories. Normally, I wouldn't care too much, but this was a long 5 and half hour transcon redeye flight.

To keep myself somewhat sane during the flight, I decided to make a log: 

11:30PM - (settling into my middle seat, my home for the next 5 hours)

11:32PM - (looking at boil on seatmate's neck) Well, that's quite intriguing.

11:50PM - I think I can survive this.  They're playing Moonrise Kingdom.   I heard it was a good movie.

11:55PM - The lady in front of me has hair like Marge Simpson.  I can't even see the TV monitor.

12:04AM - What the hell is going on in this movie???

12:32AM - Seatmate in the aisle is snoring.

12:36AM - ...now the other seatmate in the window is snoring

12:42AM - The snorchestra grows increasingly louder

12:43AM - Contemplating in-flight suicide using overdose of mini liquor bottles and airborne pills (a well-known deadly concoction)

1:40AM - Sooooooo tired!

1:45AM - Create makeshift shiv out of pen and pencil sharpener 

1:48AM - Begin carving tallies of the minutes I've been on the plane into my tray table

2:37AM - Try to convince myself I'm in Cancun

2:40AM - Start to become delirious and lightheaded from constant flow of gas from my seatmates

3:40AM - Need to use the restroom...trapped behind wall of fat

3:58AM - Fall asleep for 5 minutes and dream that I'm in Singapore Airlines first class

4:03AM - Quickly awoken and jolted back to reality by aftershocks from seatmate's fart

I spent the rest of the flight in a coma.  When we arrived in Newark, I kissed the ground thankful to be off that plane.