This was also my experience in Tokyo and Paris. When I moved to London for my A-levels, I couldn’t believe at how much space was left on the train even during rush hour. It was seriously amazing at how upset Londoners would get because someone sat close or how guys would try to take up tons of room. I was couldn’t help but think WHAT ASSHATS.

The best experience ever though is watching tourists on Italian buses, trains and planes because all of them would act like Mike Teevee’s mother in the original Willy Wonka movie with that nose upturned move. Seriously, if you don’t like the press of humanity? You need to pay more than 3 euros a ride! Walk or take a taxi!

The Event:

I was flying from Atlanta to Los Angeles this past Christmas to visit the folks. As usual, I thrust myself into my chosen window seat and disappeared into a book. For a while, it seemed as if I would be flying without a seat partner until, almost at the last moment, a man sat down in the aisle seat next to me.

Now this guy was definitely big. Fat and tall. He took up a lot of room — you know, his own room, the seat that he paid for. And maybe he took up a little bit of mine, but here’s the thing: I wasn’t uncomfortable. I still had room. Plus he was polite, he didn’t make idle ridiculous chitchat, and he let me have the arm rest, which makes him, in my book, the greatest seat mate in the history of Delta Airlines. So he settled himself into his seat, I continued to read my book, and all was pleasant for about two minutes.

Then the flight attendant came by.

She looked at both of us and then asked, “Are you two traveling together?” Only she was really asking me. It was me she was looking at, me whose eyes she was boring into with silent empathy. Empathy for what? I didn’t have time to consider it, because after we both shook our heads in response to her question, she put her hand on the gentleman’s shoulder and said, “Let me see what I can do to make you more comfortable.”

Off she went, returning a few seconds later to tell my seat partner that she had a “comfortable” aisle seat for him in an “empty row” at — you guessed it — the back of the plane. I think the gentleman was shocked, just as I was, because neither of us could answer her right away. I might have opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, silently, willing words to come (of course, they didn’t). Finally my seat partner said okay, and he stood up and made his way to the back of the plane, but not before the flight attendant shot me another look that clearly said, “You’re welcome.”

Um, excuse me? Did I ask you for anything? Did I complain about having no space? Was I being squished? No. I was sitting comfortably, with my arm on the arm rest for once, reading pleasantly, just as my seat partner had adjusted himself in his own seat and was reading his magazine. We were absolutely fine. The flight attendant, most likely thinking she was being good at her job, assumed that just because I fit into my seat and he didn’t quite fit into his, I somehow needed saving from The Fat Man who deserves to be castigated for his fatness and separated from good decent folk that have the courtesy to possess smaller asses that fit into Delta’s famously roomy economy class seats.

It’s one thing if the gentleman had asked to be placed in an empty row. Maybe he did, but I don’t think so because he seemed just as shocked as I was when the flight attendant suggested/commanded that he move. No, it was literal segregation of the worst kind. Banished to the back of the cabin, alone, like a fourth-class citizen. I can’t help but recall one of our nation’s most important historical moments, you know, the one where a person refused to be moved to the back of a bus on the basis of her race. How is this different? Of course it isn’t, but I am sure that the flight attendant and maybe everyone on the flight crew and perhaps even a large number of the passengers wouldn’t consider my seat partner’s removal a breach of civil rights. At that time, I had only just started reading your blog and had no words for what I was feeling, only a general, inarticulate sense of shock and outrage at the flight attendant’s assumption that I needed her help, that I couldn’t bear a five hour flight sitting next to a fat man. And now what I feel is resentment that I was implicated in that breach of civil rights because I was unable to speak up. I can tell you it won’t happen again.

I guess I want to say thank you, Shapely Prose, for helping me find the words.

But I do take issue with people sitting on the bus in the seats that are clearly marked “for disabled and elderly people” and then NOT getting up when those people get on the bus – the first-come first-served rule is fine in most instances, but I think not in this one. If an old lady with a cane gets on the bus, then the young and apparently totally healthy person taking up one of those special seats really OUGHT to get up.

Unfortunately, I have to take the MBTA into Boston every day and EVERY DAY there is some drama. It is always crowded and there is always someone complaining about something. I don’t have a problem with people taking up more than one designated space – first come first serve. What makes me crazy are (a) the people who take their kids out of a stroller and put them on a seat while blocking two other seats with the stroller (and then getting pissy when you ask them to move); (b) men who use crowded trains as an opportunity to grope (I had a friend who actually got jizzed on …ewww) but some creep who was jerking off; (c) the woman who puts her bag on a seat between two riders and when asked to move it said she was waiting to be able to fit in the seat (huh?); (d) the people who refuse to move away from the door when there are seats and space available away from the doors; and (e) I always offer my seat to elderly and pregnant women but it isn’t always appreciated. I offered my seat to a very pregnant woman who screamed at me and told me she was pregnant not handicapped. I don’t know why “no, thank you” couldn’t have been her response. I could go on and on but you get the idea . . . .

Can’t we all just get along . . . we all want to just get where we are going . . . .