Two Kinds of People: the traveling cross country edition

Awhile back I suggested there are two types of people in the world and that shopping carts and their proper use say a lot about people. This time I'd like to extend that to traveling on an airplane.

I just got back from a lovely weekend trip to Sacramento, California (a highly underrated city, in my opinion). The journey required two flight legs -- Omaha to Denver and Denver to Sacramento. On the way out I splurged for Economy Plus (plus what? extra leg room, that's what). Sitting in Economy Plus also allows one to be closer to the front. (A double edged sword as this also means that you can see the white linen napkin service of first class and really smell the real food being warmed up as you snack on your bag of 6 pretzels.)

On the way back, however, there were no aisle seats in EP, and so I decided I'd suffer through the two legs of my trip in seats 20D and 21D, respectively. I'm made of pretty tough stuff, so I figured I could take it.

Do you know me? I'm a tall girl. Not as tall as my 6'1" sister, but 5'10" without shoes on is apparently taller than the airlines want you to be in the "huddled masses" section of the airplane. I was sitting with my butt firmly planted in the back of the seat (no slouching) and my knees were completely pressed into the seat in front of me. And as both of those flights were full, there was someone in the middle seat, thereby forcing my legs forward instead of out to the sides.

Okay. That was all a lot of verbage to say what I want to say: it takes a special kind of asshole (just my opinion now) to recline the seat away from it's "full, upright and locked position" (to quote the friendly flight attendants) and further into my knees. By the time the guy in front of me was done, my knees were jammed so far into his seat I wasn't sure how it was possibly comfortable for him. He'd seen me walk in. He saw I was tall. He must've felt my knees. And yet he did it anyway. I'll admit that I squirmed around a little bit, making sure he felt how little room his extra 2 inches of recline gave me. And yes, some could argue that is rude as well. But seriously. (To quote Grey's Anatomy) Seriously? Seriously.

How hard is it to think about the person sitting behind you? The person who has to endure your seat becoming intimately close to their lap. The person who can smell whether or not you've washed your hair as it comes dangerously close to their nostrils. It's not hard. It's decent and respectful. And maybe he was thinking, "Well, I'm tall too. I need that extra room." In this case he wasn't tall. And I suppose I could've thought the same thing and pushed my chair back bothering the person behind me. But I just don't have it in me. We are afforded so little space to ourselves on those stupid planes, I'm not going to rob the person directly behind me of what little comfort they might have left.

So, if you're reading this and you're a seat recliner, all I ask is that you think about it before you do it next time. I ask that you take into consideration whether or not the person behind you is tall and has long legs. If you think they can spare the room, then fine. What about a nice, "Would you mind if I recline my seat a bit?" That goes a long way, I gotta say. Because you aren't the center of the known universe. You are another person in the midst of a throng of people, all of whom are barely holding onto the last shreds of both their sanity and their humanity as they are shoved into a tiny, claustrophobic space and expected to share pencil thin armrests with sweaty strangers and make small talk with people who don't bring reading material onto planes (Seriously!?!?). You are one of many. You are a citizen of the world. Stop acting like you own the damn place and return your seat to its full, upright and locked position. Oh, and enjoy your flight. Thanks for flying the friendly skies.