SILENT COMBAT ON A BOEING 777
alan skeoch
July 24, 2018
“Our seats are in there?”
“Fine, let me get up.”
Two matronly looking British ladies would be my seat mates from London, England to Toronto, Ontario…a 7 hour flight. Marjorie and I had aisle seats. The plane was packed, every seat taken…up to 400 people can be crammed into the Air Canada Boeing 777. Certainly more than 300 on board today, Hence the term ‘flying sardine can’ has been a popular moniker for the
Air Canada Boeing 777. Would our trip be crowded but pleasant…or crowded and living hell?
Certainly crowded.
“This is going to be Bad.” My gut decision as the two shouldered me aside and settled into their seats. Both reminded me of a Giles cartoon.
The rather large lady in the centre, lit the panic light in my brain right from the get go.
She had a large pack sack…like a potato sack. Filled with who knows what but it was big and bulky. Top loaded for a reason. “If it’s free, it’s for me!” should have been
painted on the sack.
“Can I stow your bag up above for you?”
“No…need it down here.”
And she wedged the sack between her feet which meant her feet spread out
into my seat space. We had no conversation from that point on…never talked.
Just carried on a silent relentless war.
We played a war game call “You elbow me and I’ll elbow you right back”
as we duelled for space on the mutual seat arm. I should mention that Air Canada
has managed to wedge 10 seats across each row (window 3 seats seats aisle 4 seats aisle 3 seats window)
That is one hell of a lot of human flesh per row. And it also means sharing the 3 inch
wide seat arm.
Sharing would be bad enough but Maisie (invented name as we never talked) was
determined to get the seat arm all to herself.. Immediately I was aware of Her hot shoulder and sharpened elbow…
Pushing. No give. She was spreading out like a mother hen does when hatching eggs.
For the next seven goddamn hours we duked it out for dominance. I held my own for most of the time
but it was not easy. If I eased up on the pressure she pushed me into full retreat mode. So I kept
up the same pressure. The Cold War. Reaching for a book or newspaper was out of the question To reach is to
surrender. To soften the clenched arm and hand is invite border aggression. Border?
Wrong word. There was no border. Only that thin 3 inch wide stretch of No Man’s Land.
Maisie and her friend
had planned their trip well. They were gamers. Computer gamers. Perhaps 60 to 70 years old but gamers all
the same. Their first hour was spent bashing the screen while playing Soduki. Each time she pounded
the screen her arm hovered over into my air space. That gave me a chance to regain some of my arm rest. I
thought mistakenly. The hovering arm was always slammed down on top of mine.
For the duration of the trip she stared at her friend or straight ahead. She knew we were at war.
And I became aware of her conscious aggression when the stewardess brought us drinks.
“I’d like the wine and a glass of the fizzy stuff.”
I did not know Maisie really hated me until the fizzy stuff incident. While she was stowing the wine in
her potato sack along with the 5 creamers for her coffee and who knows what else. While she was
doing this, the stewardess asked,
“Would you pass this glass of Sprite to your seat mate?”
I winced at the term seat mate.
“Sure.”
Then Maisie got really aggressive.
“Did his lips touch my drink?”
She hated me. The feeling became openly mutual from that point on. We jostled flesh against flesh like some
medieval battle. She pushed…I pushed…she pushed I pushed. The arm rest could’ve been a barbed wire fence.
Correction. That miserable sliver of an arm rest
‘Should’ have been a barbed wire fence.
I tried to keep my mind occupied thinking of nice things in life…like a walk in Coldfall Park in London, or cool pint
of dark ale in a pub where great people haVE socialized or even my walk through the wild wilderness St. Pancras graveyard…
While at the same time keeping pressure flesh to flesh on my seat mate. Hate that word seat mate.
Things went from bad to worse. But she won. At least I think it was her. She resorted to chemical warfare just as
our plane entered North American air space. She broke wind. Farted. And it was vile. You might ask ‘How did you
know it was her? Could have been anyone packed in that flying sardine can. I knew. I knew. The way
she set her mouth in satisfaction.It was one of those silent but deadly gas jets. I don’t see how she aimed the gas
at me. But that was when I gave up the battle.
I unclipped myself and took a long stroll to the washroom where I was certain the air would be better. First
washroom about midway down the 777 had a tape across. Out of Order. At the very back there
were two others. I chose the one of the left with the short lineup. Unwise. Inside that washroom
was a teen age boy throwing up. He called for his mother and she joined him as he harrumphed his
dinner.
While waiting I practiced my therapy lesson in an effort to relieve my torn Achilles tendon,
something I gained from a previous trip to England months earlier when I failed to notice an infinity ramp.
Like an infinity pool that creates the illusion of stepping off into space. I stepped off into space
and ended up mashed severely. So my recovery entailed standing on one foot then the other. While
doing this the male steward began to worry I was about to take a leak on his floor.
“Come this way, sir,”
“Me?”
“yes, sir, you have been standing here the longest.”
And he ushered me into the last operating washroom in economy class. 300 people and one functioning can.
Several women lined up for this washroom. I had been given precedence.
“Could it be true?” I asked myself as I slipped the latch on the door.
“Could it be true that Maisie was the person who had been next in line? Could it be a small victory for me?
Sadly it was not. Maisie was in her seat. Her flesh covered the arm rest. Was there a smirk on her face?
I could not be sure. The war continued but only half heartedly. She won. In submission, like some priest committing his life to others, I angled my body into the aisle
where the food carts slammed into me and people rushing to the washroom baffed me. Between blows,
I resorted to reading the Manchester Guardian, a liberal newspaper. I was convinced the person beside me
was a Trump supporter. I gritted my deeth. But took solace in the belief that good will triumph over evil in time as
Tennyson said, “We can but hope that somehow good will be the final goal of ill.”
Touchdown was a great relief.
alan skeoch
July 24, 2018
P.S. I do not know how they did it. Both Maisie and her friend managed to exit the plane ahead of us. To do
that they would have to push us aside. But they did it. Their victory was total.
PPS One of the features of Giles cartoons was a really bitchy old grandmother. I thought of her on the flight.
That is her with the gun in the cartoon below. MAISIE DID NOT HAVE A GUN. I could be wrong, that sack
was big enough for a gun.
