Too much to chronicle today. I spent the weekend in California and, to a smaller extent, Mexico. But let me begin by talking about the plane ride going there.
It started out fine. I was up and ready at about 4:30 AM since I had to drive all the way to Midway Airport and park in the "economy" lot.
Please note that the term "economy" shouldn't be used to describe a parking lot if they charge as much as I had to pay to park there for 3 days. It's much like the concept of "economy class" airplane tickets. I don't consider it economy if you have to pay $300 for it. In this case I flew Southwest Airlines for the first time. Maybe I should have known this from the beginning, or at least asked, because I had no idea there were no assigned seats. Instead they break you up into three groups: A, B, and C.
If you look at it in a Titanic way, A is the upper class, B is the not-so-upper class, and C is steerage. In this case, the steerage gets seated last, so if you're at the butt end of steerage, you end up sitting next to the unsavory people, or in my case between two really really fat people. I have no other way to describe them in words other than "really really fat".
It's almost cliche. It's something that you would think would only happen on a Seinfeld episode, only less funny. At least it wasn't funny at the time. I would extract a few laughs when telling the story later on. I was literally squashed into a small portion of my own seat because of the folds of fat that were encroaching onto my space. If that wasn't bad enough, the woman, who was sitting on my left, fell asleep. She had no clue of the discomfort she would put me in when she fell asleep and slowly poured her way into my space. I could feel her pillowy body pouring over my arm like an overflowing vat of corn syrup (high fructose).
I tried to demonstrate to others the position I was in. My arms were tucked awkwardly in front of my body like a halfway transformed transformer. To drive the point in further, I was planning on doing bills while on the plane but I couldn't move my arms. I was barely able to hold a book in front of me to read it. I propped the book against the tray table. I considered using my nose to turn the pages.
I debated with my brother afterwards the problems with severely overweight people on airplanes. Should they pay for extra seats or should they have their own "roomier" seats at an extra charge. His argument was that since we pay by the pound to transport objects overseas, it should be the same with passengers. In other words the 50 lbs of extra fat the big person is carrying technically is the same as a less fat person checking an extra bag. We're not allowed to bring large baggage into the cabin, so why should extremely fat people be allowed to carry on the extra fat, especially if it encroaches on other peoples space and makes people less comfortable than they should be.
Conversely, if someone wasn't fat but was just really big, they should be subject to the same rules. I wasn't sure about this. It seemed like watchdog groups would be all over that. I'm not a skinny person, but I'm willing to bet that most skinny people out there, regardless of their politics, deep down feel that they don't want to sit next to Jabba the Hutt on an airplane, especially in coach class.
Now, I wouldn't have cared if I didn't have to be the monkey in the middle. But it was obvious that the two were together. I assumed they were married. This is what happens when two really really fat people get married. They go on airplanes and make people like me very unfomfortable. I understand and appreciate their rights to travel with the rest of society, but the least they could have done was sit together and given the smaller person the aisle seat. After all, they did know each other and were probably married, so I'm sure it would be less awkward for them to be squeezed together like two matzo balls rather than having both of them squeezing me between them. It's common courtesy.
It also may have been common courtesy if they decided to take the Amtrak. Sure it takes two days, but at least they get their own compartments, and they get to view some beautiful scenery.
I guess the moral of the story for me is if you're walking down the aisle of a Southwest Airlines flight, don't be too selective of who you sit next to. I admit I passed up the opportunity to sit next to some seedy-looking, yet smaller, people. This brings up a whole other debate which I will not get into at this moment: Would you rather sit next to a really really fat person or a smelly person.
It also depends on what the smelly person smells like.
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