i, by my nature, am an aisle seat gal. but, by some spiteful act of god, i have been cursed to travel the world stuck in the damned, the dreaded, the terrible, middle seat.

for our honeymoon, ed and i embarked on an ambitious trip. 23 days, just us, travelling from detroit to japan (via chicago, an easy stop) and then onward to equatorial thailand and then down below to australia. In thailand, we travelled from bangkok up to the hilltribes of chiang mai, and then southward from chiang mai back through bangkok to the lovely southern provence of krabi. all of these flights, i have been forced to endure the middle seat. by vocation as well as experience, i know the benefits of the aisle seat, and even the window seat (which, in my opinion, is the lesser of the two), and had booked myself on the aisle seat for every leg of our journey. but here i am, again, stuck between ed, who is seated at the window (his preference due to the fact that he would like to be the first to know if the wing happens to fall off) and some stranger who i cant help but feel seething contempt for. this does not even begin to describe the feelings of bitterness i have for whomever changed my prereserved aisle seat to this dreadful middle seat. i wish them nothing less than countless years of confinement within the middle seat in every aspect of their lives.

now you may think i am overreacting just a tad. but trust me, i am not. when it comes to travel, my extreme passion in life, i tend to put up with a lot. like a battered wife, i keep coming back, time after time, almost eager to see what abuses i will be put through this time. what? no luggage for 3 days in the greek isles? glorious! a sprained ankle at the eiffel tower? piece of cake. how about nearly third degree blistering sunburns in the cloudless caribbean? is that all that you've got? attacked by a hungry ostrich at a wildlife preserve? come on, looks good in the photo album. almost frostbitten in the steamy london summer? no complaints here! almost kidnapped by a rage induced turkish cabbie? puh-leese, what else have you got?
these, and many many more (some self induced) occurances have not only made travel more challenging, but have given me a good sense of humour and patience when it comes to globetrotting. i mean, who else knows better than i, what is bound to happen if i am involved in any given situation.

but this, this horrible, horrible stroke of luck has only brought me to the conclusion that i was very very bad in a past life. i suppose, as i write this feverishly on a thai airways vomit bag, that a 20 minute flight, like this one (from bangkok to krabi, for those of you who are interested), it really is not so bad. but what about the 13 and a half hours flight from chicago to tokyo? what of that? not to mention that the man in the window seat, an almost virgin flyer, spent the majority of his time either climbing, physically climbing, over me (no need to actually ask me to move, now is there?), or passing the most ridiculous amount of gas during quite possibly the ENTIRE duration of the flight. dont ask me what he ate for dinner, because i had the same thing, and i managed to keep my middle seat odor free. well, that is until he climbed back over me once more and resumed his gastrointestinal pyrotechnics and polluted my secluded 31". it was so bad that it literally woke me up out of a dead sleep. TWICE. if ed's phobia of flying was not so bad (and, thank god, it does get better each trip we take), i would have fought him tooth and nail for that glorious aisle seat that was printed on his boarding pass. but no, i am far too kind for that. well, that, and i know that if he becomes too traumatized, i know he'll never fly again.

but damn, damn, damn this wretched middle seat. it is bad enough that you have to practically BEG your surrounding neighbors to let you escape to the bathroom, but there are also the issues of border patrol. you are almost forced to wage war to claim an armrest, both of which the aisle seaters and the window seaters believe that they have full and rightful claim to. but the armrests are like borders unmapped, that will soon be captured by your oh-too-close neighbors, and i for one, hate to take such an aggressive approach to sitting. you are the mercy of those around you, making those who are doomed to such a seat, second class citizens, as if "coach" seating wasnt bad enough.

a curse on whatever airline agent switched me into this hellish position. and a curse on you, middle seat.