Flying Home

I like a seat on the aisle, as it provides maximum access to the exit and minimum contact with that dastardly lot, Other People. Once I was on one of those planes with three seats across, and the woman in the middle asked me to switch with her. "Sorry," I said. "I'm pregnant and I have to visit the lav a lot." Then I quietly slipped the class ring I wear on my left hand to my ring finger, and never got up at all.

It's a fairly solid strategy, one that does fail occasionally. Such as this week: I get on the plane, and my aisle partner is a guy with hair longer than mine, an entirely black wardrobe, and an Insider's Guide To Middle Earth in hand. I'm thinking this is the closest he's come to female contact since, I don't know, birth, a suspicion confirmed when he looked up at me and said, "Good evening."

Okay. Unless you're Alfred Hitchcock, a vampire, or an emcee, YOU DON'T SAY "GOOD EVENING."