United Flight 324

Every now and again, or rather, again and again and again and again I am subjected to the rather tiresome exercise otherwise known as flying.  The chore has become increasingly tedious as the mode of transportation has gone from a fairly selective to utterly pedestrian.  I am, in short, aboard the equivalent of a public bus 40 thousand miles above the ground.  The democracy of aviary travel is ruining my life.

This flight, in particular, has become particularly noteworthy.  Maybe it's due to the fact I have woken up at 4 am, 1:30 am, and 3:30 am the past three days.  Maybe I'm being oversensitive.  But maybe, just maybe, this really is the flight from hell.

What I Am Currently Disliking (Strongly) About This Flight:

1.  There are two hours remaining.  

2.  Over the course of the last three hours I have been forced to listen to the child sitting next to me ask such questions as:

"Mom, why is she sitting here?" 

"Are we even moving?"

"Is my water going to be cold?"

And conversations similar to:

"How much longer do we have?"

"An hour and fifty minutes."

"An hour?"

"An hour and fifty minutes."

"An hour?"

"A little less than two hours.

"Less or more?"

"Less."

The highlight being simultaneously entertaining and depressing:

"Are we going down?"

"Yes."

"Is someone going to shoot us?"

"No."

3.  I have had only two three ounce servings of water served to me since I boarded.  I am far too cheap to shell out $4 for a bottle of Desani from the airport and I forgot my empty 1.5 liter Trader Joe's water bottle to fill up with tap water.  The ravages of dehydration are setting in and I am beginning to feel my lips recede past my gums like a Victorian corpse in a wooden box.  

4.  The Taiwanese man that I switched seats with when asked by his wife, "You switch with my husband, okay?" has left his seat reclined into my lap the entire trip.  The person in front of him (aka the person who I should have in front of me per my United Airlines e-ticket) has kindly left his erect.  That's the last time I do you a favor, buddy.

5.  I am starving.  And no, Airlines, I don't want your shitty hot meals.  The last time I got a treat like that, a female flight attendant threw a cheese burger wrapped in plastic, burger sweat fogging up the expanding container.  What I would like is a granola bar, a bag of nuts, something that I don't have to pay for whilst in the middle of a five hour hunger pang.

6.  Rest assured, I am not naive enough to believe such fare will be provided for me.  Before boarding I bought my go-to trail mix which is now making me painfully gaseous.  I attribute this to the raisins.

7.  Our movie options were Horton Hears a Hoo and Gold Rush.  Enough said.

8.  I am close enough to the restroom to experience what I believe to be people passing gas en route.  I suppose the freedom I feel in having one foot of empty space to the right of me is only beneficial when said air is not full of methane gas.

9.  The state of the singular bathroom servicing sixty coach passengers was already in poor form one hour into flight.  The crevices in the floor corners collected piss like a rain gutter in Lilliput.

10.  While attempting to nap, a child stepped on my sandal-clad foot while running down the isle.  I am lucky he was young and light, not one of those super-sized children I read about in Time.  Children are quite fat these days.  Not to continue the barrage on the mother/son team next to me, but I was a bit befuddled when the mother tried to up sell Coke to her child and questioned his only wanting water.  He ended up with cranberry juice which I thought to be a sugary compromise.