The Median Sib

Note added on 9/20/06: Let me clarify. This post refers to commercial airplane designers and owners. RT owns a plane and flies regularly - and I fly with him often. And he should definitely NOT be shot. (Can you guess that he saw the title of the post and ask, “I should be shot?”)

Well, not literally. But REALLY! The way airplane seating is designed is criminal! Have you traveled by plane lately? The planes have seats so crammed together that you literally cannot stand up in front of your seat. Even average-size people can barely fit in the narrow seats. And even if you fit in the seats, you can’t rest both arms at the same time because you share an armrest with the person next to you.

Tuesday night coming home, I had an experience I have never had before in traveling by plane. I was in a middle seat. RT was on one side by the aisle - and some guy I didn’t know was on the other side by the window. It was 3:00 in the morning. We had been traveling for about five hours. It was hot. It was cramped. Lots of people were sleeping, but I just couldn’t go to sleep - I was too uncomfortable.

I started feeling sick, and I knew I couldn’t stay in my seat. It wasn’t a rough flight, and I hadn’t eaten anything that would make me feel ill. However, the stuffiness, the lack of sleep, the cramped quarters made me ill. The only way I could move at all was to try to stand - bending from the waist - ask RT to let me out of the row (he had to move out into the aisle to let me out) - and side-walk out of the row and up and down the main aisle of the plane. I walked from one end to the other thinking that a little exercise would make me feel better. It didn’t.

I went into the bathroom and just stood there for a minute - and surprise! standing in a plane lavatory didn’t make me feel better. So I then went out and asked the flight attendants if they had something that would help. The ONLY positive part of the plane was the flight attendants. One of them got me some ginger ale, and the other went to find a cold cloth for my forehead, and they had me sit down on a stool in the galley. I sat there for about a minute and suddenly I knew that it was imperative that I get to the lavatory immediately.

Within a minute I was in the lavatory, but there weren’t any air sickness bags in there! I looked everywhere! I couldn’t use the toilet because. . . well, I was having to use it for another aspect of my general stomach upset. The only solution was to throw up in the sink. As any air traveler knows, the lavatory is so cramped that using the toilet and the sink simultaneously is not an impossible task. (Caution - gross description is next) So I threw up in the sink -over and over and over. But, horrors! It wouldn’t go down the drain - too chunky, I guess. So I had a sink full of upchuck. Have I completely grossed you out yet? When my stomach was thoroughly wrung out, and I was practically hanging onto the sink in exhaustion, I knew I couldn’t leave the bathroom that way. What to do? I finally used a mountain of paper towels to clean the sink - throwing the used ones into the trash and grabbing more. I think I cleared them out of paper towels. Being the fastidious person I am, I stood there and worked at it until the lavatory was as clean as I could make it.

When I emerged from the lavatory, I felt much better, although still shakey. The flight attendants had gotten RT when I made my mad dash for the bathroom. So he was there waiting for me. I went back to my seat, kept the cold towel on my forehead - and actually dozed off a little before we landed in Chicago.

I place the ENTIRE blame for that experience on United Airlines and their stupidly cramped airplanes. Long flights are nothing more than an exercise in endurance. It’s criminal!

As I was unpacking our suitcases Wednesday evening, I found a “Notice of Baggage Inspection” in two of our three bags. Yea, we middle-aged white folks traveling home from Alaska are likely terrorists. Glad the Transportation Security Administration protected all the passengers for such possible harm.