Friday, November 07, 2008

Foot in mouth disease

Do you ever have one of those moments when something starts to come out of your mouth and mid-sentence you realize there just isn't a graceful way to finish what you started?

I had one of those today.

When I got on the plane to Pittsburgh, there was a woman in my seat. Now I'm not usually a big rule-follower, so it wasn't going to be a big deal if we had to switch seats. Since it was just 2 seats on each side, no biggie. Or so I first thought...

When I asked her if she was in the right seat, turns out she was supposed to be in the seat one row further back. And in the window seat already was...well...a good-sized woman. Good as in large.

At the risk of the pot calling the kettle black, I'm a big guy, and I'm overweight.

But no 2 seat row needs both of us fighting for armrest space.

So the lady in my seat is asking me if I mind just sitting in her seat, and I'm looking at the other lady there, and I'm trying hard to formulate a coherent and graceful word to say. Here's what came out in response to her question:

"Well, uh, you know, with two people as wide-shouldered as we are, we should probably sit in different rows. How about I just take the seat I was assigned?"

I felt terrible the whole flight.

But I did have plenty of shoulder space.

1 comment:

Mike Sharrow said...

I used to have an old little Jewish lady in Chicago who worked for me. One day she asked if she could leave early because her hairdresser would cancel her appointment if she wasn't there at least 5 minutes early - no grace. I responded, "wow, sounds like a Nazi. Sure you can go a little early." I turned just in time to see her stunned face looking back at me. D'oh!

Glad you had space on the plane, though. That's hard to get - never tried the foot in mouth technique to get some elbow room!