FIRST CLASS ISN'T ALWAYS WHAT IT IS CRACKED UP TO BE

Just got finished reading the Bloggess' account of her first class flight to Puerto Rico. It is hilarious. She speaks of the joys of first class, however, her vision is impaired, I mean enhanced by a combination of xanax and cocktails, which could make an episiotomy seem like a spa treatment.

I once first hand experienced the down side of sitting in first class, which is that those seats often are filled by obnoxious asses. Here is my story. My brother would probably this number six or seven.

I get to the airport with my two children who are at the time four and eleven months. I am leaving my parents' house in Fla to return home, which at the time was in Columbia, South Carolina.

I hate to fly, and I have two flights with two babies ahead of me. Myhusband had to stay home and work. The airport is busy because it is Spring Break. This is pre 9/11, so mom and dad walk us to the desk. I see Bruce Hornsby, who I recognize because he has recently had, if memory serves me correctly, twins and I saw him on some morning show. He is on our flight, and now I know the plane is going to crash and we will all die a fiery death. I look down at my shoes, and think these are the flipflops that will be floating in the ocean on cnn. They'll say, one of the victims was a young mother of two... I know I am crazy...

* Some of my superstitions with regard to flying include:*

1. Never fly on plane where there are celebrities, the makings of a perfect tragedy.
2. Never take a bump or switch flights, because then you are destined to go down. Your family will say, "if only she had been on her original flight"
3. Only fly if a major crash has recently occured, you have better odds.
4. Don't fly if you hear "fire and rain" on the radio anytime during the week before your flight.

And now back to my story:

So anyway, I saw Bruce Hornsby and I started to panick. Then I heard the flight was overbooked. The check-in guy told me that no way would I make my connecting flight because this flight was going to depart later than scheduled. If I missed my connecting flight, I would have to sleep in the charlotte airport because there were no more flights to Columbia that night, and every hotel in Charlotte was booked on account of March Madness. He could give me first class seats on the first flight in the morning. Over course, I'd be laid over in Charlotte for three hours instead of twenty minutes, as I would have been if my original flight took off on time, but it was my best option. I agreed, figuring, the likelihood that we'd live to see Charlotte was slim, what with two red flags, celebrity and switch flight, already up. Although maybe, since I switched my flight to avoid flying with a celebrity, the two would cancel each other out and I would be safe.

The next morning we arrived for our first class flight. Everything went eerily well. We were the first on the plane, and all the flight attendants were being super sweet. One teeny tiny problem. The two seats they gave us were not together. I was across the aisle from my daughter and in the window seat. At four she would not sit alone and next to a stranger. "Oh the FA said, don't worry, I'm sure whoever has the seat next to you will happy to switch. Just sit her next to you and ask them when they get on the plane."

Enter a most disguisting being. Over weight, sloppily dressed, wearing his hair in a braid and carrying a two liter of diet coke and a styrofoam box of greasy, stinky chinese food. "This is my seat" he says. I nicely explain the situation. His reply is "I paid for this seat, and this is where I will sit."

I wanted to fucking strangle him. I explained to the FA nicely that I originally had seats that were next to each other, but because of an airline error, I had to have my flight switched. I got no food vouchers, no hotel accomodations, and now I was getting a bag of shit from this guy.

"I am sorry mam, but there is nothing that I can do. It is his seat."

With that I picked up the baby and moved over to my window seat, leaving my daughter alone with the spineless slob. I figured that if she cried for a couple of minutes, he would agree to switch. Instead, he sat there as she sobbed and guzzled his diet coke straight from the bottle and shoveled his chinese food into his swine-like face. So disgusting.

A woman came and sat down next to me. She asked me what was going on. She insulted him and asked him what his problem was. He ignored her, and my crying daughter, and continued to stuff his face and heckle the FA to bring him more food. Ultimately, the woman who was sitting next to me said she'd next to the bastard.

The only good thing about the trip was that for the first time in a long time, I felt safe flying. Death by plane crash would be too comfortable a death for the devil sitting across the aisle from me.