The Worst Airline Passenger Ever

I travel pretty regularly for work -- about one trip a month. It's a fair amount of air travel, and time spent away from my family isn't ideal, but it makes for interesting work. I've been traveling all over the country since I started working as an Air Force contractor in 2003.

Most of the people that I sit next to on airplanes are unmemorable. Which is specifically what I look for on these trips. Generally speaking I am either reading a book or playing iPhone games. I don't want to have a lovely chat or get to know anyone on the plane. I'm just trying to get to work or get home.

But once in a while, I get stuck next to a beast. A Leviathan.

Traveling home Tuesday night on a late flight, the last leg. A connecting flight from Detroit to Syracuse. As I was flying after work I had decided to knock a few drinks back at the airport bar. That's what they have them open for, after all.

So, a very large, very old man, chewing a granola bar, plops his rotund self down next to me (I'm in the window seat and he the aisle). His arm and leg immediately spread out laterally into my little space. Now, I'm not a big fella, so this isn't entirely unexpected. But this guy was an amazing combination of annoying tics, weird fingernail funk and unpleasantness. He had a tendency to make little grunting sounds (not unlike the guy in "Sling Blade") every 2-3 seconds.

For the entire flight.

I put music on to drown this guy's little guttural charm out, which helped some.

He then felt a need to give the stewardesses grief for a late take off, when it was clearly due to a pair of passengers who had ran to catch this flight from some other connecting one.

I could not wait to get off the plane.

Sometimes I commend myself for showing the restraint to not tell this guy that he was like sitting next to a landfill poured into a golf shirt, or just elbowing him in his weird old face. Should it really be this hard for me to behave myself?