Continuing with the in-flight experience...
When I am totally awashed with tiredness and long to rest, I always get a seat which is next to a fat person who is occupying half my seat or I get a "middle" seat and then my space gets encroached upon by two people or I have to cope with a bawling kid beside me or a sprightly kid behind me forever kicking my seat. When people sit beside me on a flight they like to assume that I am actually half my size or so I think, otherwise how can you explain the phenomenon of "elbow space". I never ever get to rest my elbow on my seat's hand rest - someone else has got there before me.
(I have a theory about how to solve the elbow space problem without losing out on the number of people you could stuff into economy class. Will tell you as soon as I can make sound a little less crazy).
The experience I am going to narrate now is a greatly different from what I have blabbered on above.
I got onto this flight. I was in a very happy state because, even though I hadnt managed to get a window seat even with my best am-a-good-little-girl smile, I had procured an aisle seat. Sitting on the aisle requires a lot of precision. Precision on where exactly you could place your legs without tripping anyone walking by and still make use of the luxury of stretching them out. Oh! you dont know how rapidly the air hostesses and stewards move about. I have personally seen a steward emerging from the first class section to economy, tripping on an aisle passenger's foot and landing on his nose half way across the deck. If I let myself ramble on, I can write reams of irrelevant stuff can't I?!!
So, I got to my seat and it was a three seater. There was a girl already at the window seat and nobody in the middle seat. I waited with bated breath to see if somebody would come to occupy the seat but very soon the plane's doors were closed. I turned towards the window-seat girl and gave her a triumphant smile. She dint understand the reason but she returned it. I explained to her very shortly with actions. I kicked off my shoes, lifted the seat handle and occupied half of the middle seat. I almost felt royal! The other girl was quick to grasp the meaning of this extra comfort and followed suit. We sailed peacefully through the air till I started to slumber. I dont know for how long I had slept when I woken with a huge thud on my head. In my sleep I thought the plane was crashing! I flared open my eyes and found myself looking straight into the window-seat girl's eyes. She was as bewildered as I was. What I found even more shocking was how I found her poised. She held the back of my seat with one hand and the seat in front with the other, her legs in the air. I was totally confused by now as to what was going on. All I could understand was that the thump on my head was beginning to pain a lot so I rubbed it. The girl sheepishly told me sorry and ran off in the direction of the rest room. As I became more awake I realised what had happened.
I was in deep sleep, so deep that my mouth was totally open. The other girl wanted to desperately use the rest room. She felt saddened at the prospect of waking me up from my meditative state so she thought why not try to get past without disturbing me.She recollected all that she had imbibed from the crouching tiger kinda movies. She hoisted herself in the air and would have landed safely on the other side of me, had she not misjudged the size of my head. Somewhere in the process her hand hit my head squarely on top and left me with a huge sore bump! Weirdness can only happen to me really! I mean, I get one and a half seats, and still I have to contend with those. Maybe I should just get back to remaining awake on flights.
Also, I want to thank the Lord for making me thick headed enough to suffer only a pain. But with my current track record in remembering things I would never know even if I lost some memory anyway!
4 comments:
Poor girl she must have been in a real hurry to get to the rest room ;-). Or is it poor you who had a heavy bang on ur forehead in the middle of ur sleep so high up in the air? My sympathies are divided.
That has to be one of the better flying stories I've heard.
Glad you and she are both okay.
OMG is all that strike me at the moment..hw the hell could sme1 get the space to jump arnd in an aircraft!! She must one hell of a gurl..the super-ex gurlfrnd types :D. Well, jst as a musing, I wasnt as blessed as u were wid the seats, well I thought I almost was for half of the journey,whr all the seats, total in 4 were empty beside me! on a 6 hr flight..isnt that a blessing, well its a different story that I boarded tht plane after it got cancelled thrice :(, bt the remaining half was right in the CENTER for a 5 hr flight..i was like OMG again :)
you know, in america, you could probably have sued her!
Very good story and really well written :)
Han
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