This Seat’s Taken
Traveling is hard enough as it is. Imagine having to sit next to the most obnoxious passenger on the plane. It’s hard to believe that grown adults have temper tantrums about the smallest of things. Some have no home training, and others have never been told no. People like this can only get away with their atrocious behavior in public so many times before someone finally puts them in their place.
“Neil” was taking a plane to visit his grandma. The flight would fly from Baltimore to Pittsburg, Pittsburg to Vegas, then Vegas to Boise.
Neil was flying with Southwest, so he could choose his own seat. He was on the same plane until he made it to Vegas.
Once he was on the new plane, Neil selected the last row by the window, put his earbuds in, and took a nap until he made it to Pittsburg. When the plane landed, Neil went to the bathroom while people were still boarding the aircraft. To save his spot, Neil left his backpack in his seat and put his jacket on the seat.
When Neil got back, he was shocked to find a random pregnant lady sitting in his seat. Her husband was sitting in the aisle seat, with Neil’s jacket thrown on the ground in the aisle with her backpack underneath.
Neil became very irritated with the couple that had no problem throwing his belongings around.
‘Hey,’ Neil said. ‘My things were in this seat. Obviously, that means someone was sitting there. Can I please have my spot back?’
‘Can’t you see that I am pregnant and need this seat?’ the pregnant woman shouted.
Right then and there, Neil knew he was in for a world of trouble.
~
Follow The Rules
Neil knew that if he responded to the woman, things would only continue to escalate. He looked at the husband and asked if he could scoot over. But the husband only glared at Neil as if he had said something inappropriate. He then looked Neil in the eyes and said, “Sorry but we are allowed to choose our own seats and I chose the aisle seat.”
Realizing it was a losing argument, Neil collected his stuff and moved into the middle seat. The second he sat down, the pregnant lady said, “You can’t have your backpack in your seat. You’re going to have to find a place to put it.”
“I’m just going to put it under my seat,” Neil responded.
“Where am I going to put my feet then?” the pregnant lady snapped again.
“I don’t know,’ Neil retorted. ‘Not under my damn seat.”
Suddenly Neil felt someone grab his shirt collar from behind. The lady’s husband pulled Neil inches from his face and said, “Don’t use that language with my wife or the baby. Say you’re sorry, punk!”
Neil was shocked. A random adult grabbed him in public. Seeing that he had no choice, Neil gave a half-assed, “I’m sorry.”
If he didn’t want to be kicked off the plane, Neil would have smacked the husband dead in the jaw. Instead, he plopped down and put his earbuds in. As the flight was getting ready to take off, the lady kept trying to get Neil’s attention. She yelled in his ear and snapped her fingers inches in front of his face before she finally pulled Neil’s earbud out.
“You need to turn your electronics off during takeoff!” the pregnant lady said.
Neil had never been told this before. The phone was already in airplane mode. He grabbed his earbud from the woman and turned up the volume. In a rage, the pregnant woman reached up and spammed the flight attendant button.
This caused a hold on takeoff. The flight attendant stumbled over. By the look on her face, the flight attendant was expecting an emergency.
“He won’t turn off his electronics before the flight. He is trying to kill us!” the pregnant woman exclaimed.
Realizing everyone was staring at us, the flight attendant calmly asked Neil to turn his device off. She had an apologetic look in her eyes.
After Neil turned it off, the pregnant woman started to lecture him about how she was right and he was wrong. She teased Neil like she was a child.
Neil wasn’t sure if things could get any worse. Once the flight took off, he turned his phone back on and turned his music up at full volume. He couldn’t wait till they landed so he could get far away from the couple. For now, all he could do was tune them out with a song.
Neil closed his eyes and almost forgot about them until he felt aggressive tapping on his shoulder again.
~
You Again!
Neil held his tongue as he turned to face the woman.
“You need to turn that down! It’s bad for the baby,” she said
Neil was listening to the music louder than normal, but it still wasn’t to the point that an unborn baby would be able to hear, or understand.
“No,” Neil said.
Immediately, the woman reached for the flight attendant button. Before she could, Neil let out an irritated, “Fine!”
Nick turned down the volume a few notches. Before he could put his earbuds back in, the woman then said, “It isn’t proper etiquette to ignore the people sitting next to you”.
Ignoring her, Neil managed to fall asleep for about an hour. When he woke up, he was horrified to find the pregnant woman’s disgusting foot on his backpack. Neil adjusted his foot in a passive-aggressive way to force the woman to move hers.
Out of nowhere, the woman jumped right up like toast and turned to face him.
‘Oh boy,’ Neil thought to himself.
He thought she was going to yell, but it turned out she was just getting up to go to the bathroom. Once the woman got past Neil and her husband, Neil had a brilliant idea. The second the woman waddled into the bathroom, Neil attempted to move his stuff over to the window seat.
As he went to grab his backpack, Neil felt a hand grab him.
“You are not taking my wife’s seat” the woman’s husband snarled.
When the pregnant woman returned, the husband immediately snitched on Neil. This then led to the pregnant lady demanding Neil to move seats. Hearing the commotion, a flight attendant came over.
After hearing both sides of the story, the flight attendant sided with Neil. When the attendant asked the husband to move out of Neil’s original seat, the husband rolled his eyes as the wife scowled.
“Serves them right,” Neil thought to himself.
Once they landed, Neil made sure he was off the plane before the husband and wife. As he walked to his next gate, Neil was sure he would never see the two of them again. He couldn’t believe people like them were even allowed to have children.
Neil had plenty of time before his next flight, so he left his things on the last seat available and left to grab a bite to eat. When he was walking back, he had to do a double-take when he saw who “kept watch” after his stuff.
~
I Curse Thee!
You guessed it!
Amazingly, the pregnant lady and her husband were taking the same flight as Neil. The lady had plopped down in Neil’s chair. She smiled smugly at Neil and swung her feet that dangled over his bag and jacket thrown casually on the ground.
It was obvious by the looks on their faces that the husband and wife thought they “won.” Somewhat defeated by losing two seats to the childish couple, sleep, and his patience, Neil knew it was time for action.
He gather his things and paused for a moment as he thought of something to say.
Neil then raised his hand and overdramatically held it out to the woman. He then waved his hand over the woman’s stomach and hovered it there as he whispered nonsense. Then Neil “returned” to normal and said, “I just cursed your baby.”
The woman was speechless. Neil walked away and sat down on the floor a few feet away. He knew his acting was terrible, yet somehow it had scared the woman enough to obviously stun her. When Neil looked up, he saw tears streaming down her face.
When she told her husband, he stormed over to Neil. The husband grabbed him and brought him inches from his face.
“Listen here you little punk,” the husband managed to say before security guards detained him. One guard asked Neil why the guy was angry. Neil explained how the woman had taken my seat, so I made a comment under my breath and he got upset.
The officer asked for Neil’s name and identification. When he saw that Neil was a minor, he asked if he wanted to press charges. Neil accepted, but he also didn’t want to miss his flight.
The officer understood and let Neil go. He then informed the Southwest airline gate attendant to keep track of him in case they needed more information. Neil got to get on early and chose his seat first could.
Neil was expecting the couple to come aboard, but they never did.
Twenty minutes later, the flight attendant told Neil that he would not be able to press charges against the couple due to him being seventeen. Neil wasn’t too upset, because he also found out the couple missed their flight because of him. That meant they had to buy a new five-hundred-dollar ticket to their final destination with another airline.
Did Neil feel bad?
Hardly!
~
