I sat next to a guy yesterday flying home from Jacksonville, FL who obviously knew nothing about airplane courtesy. In fact, I don’t think he realized anyone else existed. I had the window, he had the center seat.

Mr. Etiquette started the experience flopping down as hard as he could and immediately flipping up the armrests on either side of him, to give himself more space. As soon as the plane started to back out, he pulled out his cell phone and decides to make a loud business call about insulation of some building. The flight attendant asked him nicely to put away his phone, then mentioned it over the loudspeaker, then came and talked to him again. Every time he pretended to hang up by pulling the phone from his ear and acting out pushing the “OFF” button and putting the phone in his lap. Once the flight attendant looked the other way he would continue his conversation. Finally the plane takes off and Mr. E thinks that it won’t be weird or invasive to lean over me to watch the ground disappear. The lack of armrest between us makes it easy for him to literally be on top of me. Did I mention for some reason something on the man smelled a little like cat urine?

I tried to read a magazine and ignore the cat urine scent and frequent leans to look out the window, but started to notice that despite him having his laptop out for no reason, he was reading my magazine along with me. I felt like asking if he was done with the page, and if it was okay to turn. This lasted about thirty minutes until I remembered that I had loaded several blog pages on my laptop at the airport and had some other reading I could do.

I squeezed into my bag and pulled out my laptop, and began to read. I hadn’t had my computer out five minutes and Mr. E asks, “Are you online with that thing?” Before I can answer he asks, “What time does this flight land anyway?”.

Adding to the complete lack of respect of personal space, Mr. E. obviously had a “keep your legs closed” issue and continued to bash his knee into the side of my already squeezed together knees. This normally would just be a nuisance but in light of recent events, the whole experience was quite painful.

I’m glad to be home for a few more hours. Then… off to Texas, hopefully with an empty seat next to me.