I’ll see Steven Taylor’s Observations of a Travelling Professor and raise him one. About twenty years ago I was working on a major project for a client down in Huntsville, Alabama. I’d hop on a plane first thing Monday morning and come home on the last flight out on Friday evening. As you might imagine I had quite a variety of seat companions on flights that were invariably full.
One Monday morning I was seated in the very last row of the plane. In the smoking section what’s worse. My seat companion was a very large man—I’d say 6′ 6″—who must have tipped the scales at around 350 lbs. He had clearly breakfasted on a hearty breakfast of baked beans and his ideas about personal hygiene were primitive, to say the least. Now I’ve got very broad shoulders so airline seats are pretty cramped for me under the best of circumstances and with such a Brobdingnagian seat companion I had barely enough space to inhale (if I had wanted to with such an odoriferous companion). He spent the entire flight regaling me by showing me his scars. He had some pretty interesting ones in some pretty interesting places. And he wasn’t shy, either.
Can you top that?
