My husband and I love to travel. Seeing new and different places makes us happy. We usually go on at least two trips a year. Sometimes they are only for a week but one trip tends to be for a longer time. Tomorrow we leave for three weeks in Europe. We will be boarding our plane in less than twenty four hours from now and I can’t wait. Trying to make it through the work week has been a struggle but I did it. Now I will get to spend ten hours cramped in the middle seat on the plane as my reward.
Somehow I always get the middle seat assigned to me. I wonder how that happens. I will have Steve on one side but then there is usually a stranger in the other seat that feels he needs to man-spread and take up more than his fair share of the space. Now from what I have read, courtesy dictates that the middle seat is entitled to the two arm rests in the middle but it never works that way for me. I either have to fight the stranger for it or be willing to let his arm be touching me the whole time, both options making for a very long flight. Lucky guy that Steve is, I usually opt for plan C and just lean on him for most of the trip.
The worst part of traveling is flying. No matter how the airlines try to make it seem like your comfort is their priority, the reality is you are stuck in a metal tube squashed against strangers at thirty thousand feet in the air. There is nothing comfortable about it. Maybe in first class, the experience is enjoyable but that’s not the case in economy for the majority of us. It’s just smelly and cramped.
Growing up, my family did road trips when we had to travel. With my dad being in the Army, money was tight and air travel for a family of five was usually beyond our means. We only flew a couple times, such as when my dad was stationed in Germany. So it was usually the five of us shoved into my parent’s old Volvo sedan. There would be my two sisters and I in the back seat with our dog Topper and our cats, Patches and Chou Chou, thrown in as well.
The road trips would be long with all of us fighting for space and tattling to our parents when someone was on their side of the seat. There wasn’t any air conditioning in that car, so it got hot and smelly. But at least that was family you were cramped in a small space with and you could play games with them to pass the time.
Being trapped with strangers on the plane is far less enjoyable than the road trips with family, that I look back on now with fond remembrance. My sisters and I quite often reminisce about those trips and laugh about the annoyances that bothered us so much then. I doubt that I will ever look back at any plane ride with the same fondness but I will still choose to board those planes to take amazing vacations. The annoyance is balanced in the end by the memories we make on our trips.