Sunday, December 28, 2008

I win again

On the overnight flight home from Singapore I found it really difficult to get to sleep. The problem was that by the time I'd finished eating my delicious airline-food dinner, the guy behind me had already fallen asleep. In doing so, he'd drawn his knees up to his chest and propped his legs against the back of my seat so I couldn't recline my seat at all.

Unfortunately, I didn't have an orange bag to put my head into so my head jerked around violently every time I started to nod off. I very quickly became full of rage, which is why I didn't simply turn around and ask him to move his legs.

Instead, I embarked on a subtle yet devastating program of forcing my seat back against his legs in the hope of waking him up and making him realize that he was being very inconsiderate while at the same time maintaining plausible deniability. "Oh!", I would exclaim if he confronted me, "You had your legs up on my seat and I was hurting you? I am so sorry. I thought that my seat was defective and wouldn't recline so I was trying to move it."

After about half an hour of this something gave and I was able to recline my seat and finally caught a few hours of richly deserved sleep.

When I was collecting my luggage after landing I was bustling off trying to find a trolley for our luggage and I noticed the guy I had vanquished in the Midnight Seat War. He was in a wheelchair.

First I felt guilty because the poor guy must have had to put his legs up on my chair to get comfortable. Then I felt even more guilty because perhaps he was in a wheelchair because I'd dislocated his hips. But now I suspect it was just another power-play from him. He'd probably sprinted ahead of me at disembarkation and flung himself into someone else's wheelchair just to make me feel bad. Is there no depth he will not sink to?

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