Trifecta

I'm just going to keep on writing.

Anyone who has ever flown commercially has experienced the many types of passengers aboard your flight.

The Loud Talker.

The Snorer.

The Mad Farter. (every flight has at least one of these.)

The Oversized Guy Right Next to You.

The Ethnic Food Eater (sometimes smells as bad as the Mad Farter.)

The Del Griffith.

There are other common ones, but Tuesday afternoon, I encountered a new personality. I will call him The Cat.

The Cat sat in the aisle seat in my row. I had the window seat and a guy about my age sat in the middle. The cat was in his late 20s, quite tall, and sported red hair punctuated by a matching 'stache and goatee. He also wore glasses.

The Cat liked to talk about his work in the Aviation Technology industry, however, he was not a frequent flyer and didn't know shit about planes. In fact, this was his first flight in about 12 years. He is fascinated by the mechanics of flight but knew very little about the plane itself. (He wasn't really sure if we were aboard a 737 or a 757, a rather substantial difference, and had to check the safety card in the seat pocket in front of him to confirm.) He then shared the news with Middle Seat Guy...


"Yeah, it's a 757-200. So the maximum altitude is probably 32,000 feet."


Um....no.


When we landed, he proclaimed his amazement that a plane this size could go from 500 MPH to nothing in about one mile of runway. Sure, the 757 cruises at about 540 MPH but airliners do not land at full speed. (approach speed is right around 150 MPH.)

His inexperience and propensity to speak wasn't really all that intolerable. It was almost endearing, and neither of those tendencies earned him his moniker.

The Cat REALLY liked to look out the window. And he made no subtle gesture about it - when he wanted to look out the window, he put himself in position to do it right.

I've been an aisle-seat passenger many times, and I too enjoy glancing out the window on occasion. But when I do it, I merely turn my head and take a peek, then turn back, so as to not appear to be staring at the guy sitting in the window seat. I don't really lean forward or make any unusual movement to get a better view, I just take a look and go back to my crossword.

The Cat was so intent on seeing out the window, that at times, his entire face was in the space of the guy in the middle seat (who either didn't mind, or was just a good sport about it.) He would lean forward, then backward, then toward the window, and the whole time the angle of his head never changed. It was always straight up and down even if his body was turning or leaning in several different directions in order to gain a better view around me. Apparently, I was just in the way.

It became downright uncomfortable, and there were times when he'd do this for an entire minute (which seems like an eternity) and then do it again two minutes later. I didn't know where to look, so I just kept watching the TV screen embedded on the seat in front of me. By the time we were over the Rockies, I wanted to punch him in the nose.

If he were Plastic Man, I guarantee his neck would have stretched clear across the row and flat against the window.

The reason I call him The Cat is because his behavior and the way his head never tilted reminded me of how a cat might look when trying to peer out a window. His neck would lean one way or the other, but his head remained still. It was so odd. Plus, the sunlight created a slight glare off his glasses which looked very much like looking into the eyes of a cat.

By the time we touched down at 1000 miles per hour, I never did punch him in the nose. After all, he was actually a friendly, well-intending guy. He just annoyed the bejesus out of me and I didn't have a box of Meow Mix to keep him occupied.

I wonder who I'll get on the flight home tomorrow...

Toodles!