A letter to my hard-working husband

Dear Matt,

I know you had to go to the Big Apple (or whatever you code monkeys call the manufacturer of that iPhone gadget) on Wednesday and earn money to support my unemployed butt, but you must come to the next Morning Gloryville with me. Here’s why:

Megan & Brice

My first rave began at 6:30 a.m. and ended at 10:30 a.m. Alcohol and drugs (which, I hear, is a rave “thing”) were noticeably absent. Instead, baristas served up kale smoothies and quinoa bowls. Our friends, 7-foot tall Brice and his adorable wife, Kelsey, wore multi-colored tights and skin-tight gold pants – though not necessarily in that order. I wore fishnet stockings and that $3 combat helmet I scored at Goodwill.

You may not believe it, but this Morning Gloryville movement, in which techies, hipsters and freaks alike pulsate before work at an early morning extravaganza, is actually quite fun. It’s a raveolution – or so I’m told.

You know full well that San Franciscans are accustomed to the unusual. Yet even in the Mission District, “morning unusual” is borderline unique; Our little trio turned some heads as we strutted past the coffee-guzzling suits ensconced in Starbucks on our way to 2050 Bryant Street.

“Where you going?!” one puzzled sidewalk denizen shouted after us.

“To a dance party!” (Obviously. We were much too peppy for the Walk of Shame.)

Brice & Kelsey

Of course my clubbing experience is limitless, but even I must admit I’ve only seen venues like this Inner Mission place in the movies -- and on “Sex and the City” (as you know, those girls know how to party!). Let me describe the scene for you: A former factory in a row of former factories, the space was 10,000 square feet of dance floor with surprisingly clean – Aunt Audrey would say “edible” – restrooms. A second-story, saloon-style interior balcony supported a set of false-front buildings used for some kind of bawdy and, unfortunately, recently concluded circus performance known as “The Soiled Dove.” There was even a coat check (because that’s the kind of high-class place this was). 

If there’s a rave “dress code,” my experience at Inner Mission indicates it’s something like this: skin-tight pants for men and skin-tight leggings or metallic unitards for women. Bras, underwear and shoes are superfluous. Glitter, piercings, neon hair and blue eye shadow are musts. I know that by saying this I risk securing your attendance to a future rave, but remember the neon green wig, stuffed Hooters shirt and wings get-up you wore to Guavaween 2005? Wear that, and you’ll fit right in. The hunky specimen who checked our names off the invite list – and by “invite list” I mean a printout of customers like me who purchased a $20 ticket – wore skin-tight pants and wings. I tell you, if there was a line of male Victoria’s Secret Angels, this dude would surely make the cut. (Note to self: must bring sister next time).

If there’s a rave “dance style,” my experience at Inner Mission indicates it involves flowy arms and shifting one’s weight from foot to foot. That’s good, because even I could do that, and I am pretty confident you could too. Or there's always scrambling atop one of those wobbly circus pedestals and shaking your booty. Between shakes of my own, I tossed in a few “Sailor Steps,” my go-to move at those 60+ line dancing classes I’m always telling you about.

A male Victoria's Secret Angel?!

Brice and Kelsey immediately succumbed to a rhythmic trance in perfect beat with the DJ’s electronic tuneage. Not wishing to disturb them, I weaved in and out of the dancers on a quest to compile as many snapshots for you as possible. You’re going to love the pics of the male biker in the shredded pleather pants and the gyrating Elisabeth Shue-meets-Smurfette sprite who latched onto Brice’s tutu-wearing co-worker. When I encountered Toulouse-Lautrec in a pink faux fur vest and his friend, cod piece bulging in a pair of white boxer briefs, I insisted on a group photo. (You may notice the framed image adorning our mantle.)

Let me tell you, raving is hard work. Hard, sweaty work. You’re going to want to wear plenty of deodorant – and not that wimpy Tom’s of Maine crap. I know the scent of patchouli makes you gag, but you’ll undoubtedly prefer inhaling some of that sweet hippie tang to the Eau de Stank most everyone else (yours truly included) oozes after two hours on the dance floor. Close your eyes and embrace the whiff.

Now for breakfast, you must try the chia pudding. I know. I too thought those seeds were just for ceramic pets, but their puddified version has a nice, nutty texture. The baristas from Thistle serve it up with almond milk, cashews and cocao nibs – whatever the heck those are! 

With "Toulouse" & "Cod Piece"

When you grow tired of dancing, head over to the acrobatic yoga room, hula hoop your heart out or face plant for a massage (all three activities are included in the ticket price). I noticed it’s not unusual for five or six masseuses to simultaneously knead a single body, so don’t be alarmed to feel a dozen or so groping hands upon your posterior. Just listen to the thumping bass and drift peacefully off to sleep. 

“Going to that event makes me really want to dye my hair blue and get a cartilage piercing,” Kelsey said on our way back to Silicon Valley.

You must join us next time and experience that brand of post-rave clarity for yourself. But, if not, I’m pretty sure my sister's ready and willing.

Your loving wife,

Megan

Note to my readers: Despite any (attempt at) sarcasm you may have detected in the this “letter,” I truly enjoyed my Morning Gloryville experience, and I would happily go again. Thanks to Brice and Kelsey for allowing me to tag along! We’ll get Matt to show up eventually – even if we have to hogtie him.

The zombie apocalypse: Coming soon to a flash mob near you

I may have the dubious honor of being the only person in “Thriller” history to suffer an injury during the overhead clapping portion of the dance. That’s right: my hands are bruised from overzealous smacking. But I guess injury should be expected when one repeatedly performs any action for two hours straight.

I’ve wanted to learn the moves to the iconic 1983 Michael Jackson music video ever since my sister’s classmate, Katie Boyle, so flawlessly performed the dance during their high school graduation party; I too was on the dance floor when the werewolves began howling and the doors began creaking over the DJ’s sound system. But Katie was the only occupant of the room who knew the steps, and we all watched her, mesmerized. Oh how I wanted to shimmy and shake too!

Flash forward 10 years to my bachelorette party: My younger sister and I are on a Bahamas-bound cruise, both of us attempting to learn the moves over the course of an hour-long tutorial. Tipsy on mouthwash-flavored light rum (Note: Be sure to thoroughly rinse the Scope bottle before replacing the contents with food coloring-laced liquor), we retain very little of what we learned.

Hailey, it seems, can’t even recall the name of dance; she referred to it as “The Monster Mash” in a recent Facebook message reminiscing about those joyous green tongue days.

“That was ‘Thriller,’ you dimwit!” I corrected her.

“Oh yeah!” she wrote. “I couldn't remember the name of it. Monster Mash/Thriller, same thing pretty much!”

The horror.

With Halloween fast approaching, I figured now was the time to finally commit the moves to memory. A quick Google search revealed the BayArea Flash Mob’s calendar listing for two “Thriller” dance lessons in downtown San Francisco.

“The Bay Area Flash Mob gets many requests for ‘Thriller’ during Halloween season. Haunted houses, museums, nightclubs, you name it, we’ve danced it!” according to the listing. “We want to make sure all you flash mob lovin’ zombies know the dance and are ready to execute it (get it?) at any moment.”

Wait. I suddenly realize my readers may not know what a “flash mob” is.

Mom, Dad: A flash mob consists of a large group of people who assemble in a public place and, to the delighted surprise of onlookers, spontaneously break into a dance choreographed to a song broadcast over a sound system.

Flash mobs have been a “thing” since 2003, but I didn’t know of them until 2010, when I watched the season two “Modern Family” episode, “Manny Get Your Gun.” During the episode, Mitchell surprises Cameron by joining a flash mob performing En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” at a shopping mall. But instead of expressing the customary delight, Cameron feels left out.

“You cheated on me with choreography, and that is the worst kind,” Cameron tells his partner.

To ensure my partner didn’t devolve into sour puss-hood, I invited him along to Sunday’s “Thriller” session, the first of two classes on the path to official flash mob certification. Surprisingly, he agreed to go.

Levy Dance Studio was tucked into a narrow SoMa alley, and Matt and I would have overlooked the garage door entrance had not more than 100 people been loitering outside on the pigeon-poop strewn sidewalk. They wore the rough-and-tumble expressions of “West Side Story” gangs ready to rumble, and I felt strangely subversive standing among them, as if we were all assembled for an underground meeting to plan a shake up of the populace through synchronized dance.

Matt seemed to be the only student outfitted in khakis, a polo and Converse sneakers for two hours of spastic shimmying and crotch grabbing. With 100 bodies about to be crammed into an air conditioning-deprived room, he would soon pay for the wardrobe miscalculation with sweat.

From the exuberant clapping and hooting that accompanied his introduction, I gathered Julien, the instructor, is some kind of “Thriller” expert. Blond, skinny and unmistakably French, Julien referred to the song as “Triller,” an adorable mispronunciation the female half of the room naturally found quite endearing. He’s a tenured professor of zombie behavior and likely hails from a top Parisian dance conservatory’s Michael Jackson “Bust a Move” Department.

But even Julien, in all his “Triller” wisdom, was no match for Hugh, a member of the class who gradually took center stage. The Gumby-like youth, it seems, is a “Thriller” demigod, a conduit between the Great Michael, lord of dance, and mere pelvic thrusting novices. Hugh, you see, has had instruction from the zombies who appeared in the original music video.

“Pretend you’re carrying a barrel,” Hugh advised during the jittery “advance” portion of the routine.

Hugh was lithe, limber and flawlessly smooth; each of his observations and tips was met with uproarious applause from the students and gratitude from the good-natured Julien.

Turns out, my favorite “Thriller” dance step is zombie stomping – probably because it requires little coordination and happens to be the first move in the routine.

When it comes to choreographed dance routines, Matt and I both display signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s; we can’t recall a damn thing. This uncanny forgetfulness is only exasperated by the presence of other dancers, who undoubtedly judge us and deem us unworthy of personhood. So we positioned ourselves in the far back corner of the studio, where Julien and Hugh were less likely to notice when we swung our hips left instead of right or, perhaps, crashed into the utility sink. Our preparations were foiled, however, when Julien began swapping the order of the lines “so that everyone had a chance at the front.”

Matt and I’s “front” was the meeting point of two mirrored walls. All the other zombies could clearly see us from that position and, sensing our weakness, they continued to advance until we were trapped in the corner.

“Please,” I cooed to another couple. “Take the front position. We don’t mind.”

With the two of them in front, we could follow their lead or, if they screwed up, judge them.

Despite our profuse sweating, claustrophobia, bumbling movements, and bruised appendages, Matt and I had a most enlightening time. The simultaneous stomping of 200 feet upon a wood floor is truly a wondrous sound. I wonder if passersby could hear us and, if so, whether they feared a zombie apocalypse was underway. I can only guess what the neighbors must have thought when they caught sight of Matt and I practicing last night, our silhouettes marching back and forth in front of the living room window.

Craigslist find: A "chair-boat"

This is the second time in a week I’ve come across this crazy papasan chair “boat” within the free section of Craigslist San Francisco. When I read the description, the part about the chair-boat starring in a music video, I had to watch the clip. Yes, it’s pretty awesome.

While I’m not currently in the market for a chair-boat, I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that “sweet hair mannequin.”

RATS!

I have a confession to make: I like rats.

I mean, aside from their (alleged) role spreading the Bubonic Plague, their ability to gnaw through an entire home electrical system and the confetti of poopy pellets they leave behind in attics, what’s not to like? Ah, those black, beady eyes and twitching noses! The veiny, translucent ears! The best part of a rat, however, is his little pink rat hands. They’re so cute, so human-like. I would gladly share a high-five with such a hand if I could do so without risking Hemorrhagic Fever.

My rodentia romance goes way back. From the ages of 12 to 17, I lived in Roswell, Georgia, in a house on a four-acre, fenced lot. The previous owners had constructed an adorable mini barn on the property, presumably to provide shelter for the two goats we inherited with the house. In addition to Bumpy and Dumpy, that barn housed horses, a 300-pound Vietnamese pot-bellied pig and a family of mice.

Although the mice were unexpected guests with a tendency to chew through entire bags of grain, my mom refused to kill them. Instead, we bought and set up rodent cages and provided the freeloaders with complimentary taxi service to a wooded area 15 miles away.

“Be free!” my mother and sister and I shouted as we unlatched the cages. We may have even thrown in a good-bye wave or two.

We didn’t wish to murder the mice, you see. We simply desired to relocate the rodents far enough away that they couldn’t hitchhike back. Alas, I still fret about the poor mice families we inevitably broke up. Would those poor rat moms ever see their poor rat babies again?

Matt does not like rodents. He comes from practical, reasonable stock, the kind that fails to rejoice when a colony of 50,000 bees invades his Florida rental home twice in the same year. Although Bobby, Matt’s dad and our former landlord, might disagree, the holes haphazardly sawed into the ceiling and days of vacuuming up bees the beekeeper inadvertently left behind was well-worth the 10 pounds of honey harvested from our attic. Man, that stuff was fresh!

So when Matt claimed to have spotted a rodent-like creature swinging from the bird feeder outside our kitchen window, I immediately reminded him of our trip to Hawaii, when he mistook a mongoose for a mutant squirrel. Perhaps, like the bee incidents, he’d become worked up over a little innocent wildlife interaction. I did not want to risk the removal of my bird feeder, the sole source of our indoor cats’ entertainment.  Anyway, one malnourished rodent couldn’t possibly have any connection with the latest Attic Incident.

A few weeks ago, I awoke about 6 a.m. to hear something scurrying around above my head – in the attic. It was Matt. For the past few mornings, he had risen for work and undressed only to be greeted by a blast of frigid water from the showerhead.
“Damn!” he cursed as another box toppled in the attic.

I debated, momentarily, whether I should continue to lie still and feign sleep.

“What are you doing?!” I shouted instead.

“Looking for the water heater!” Matt said, peering down at me from the trap door opening in the closet ceiling. I noticed he wore only a towel. “It must be behind all this crap.” 

 He disappeared. And then —

“Oh! Gross.”

The sudden sight of the decomposing body made him abandon all thought of the water heater. He climbed down the ladder.

“There’s a dead rat up there,” he confided. “I’m going to be late. I’ll have to get rid of it when I get home.”

If there’s one type of rat I don’t like, it’s a dead one. The mental picture of rotting flesh troubled me the entire day – so much so that I recruited a neighbor for moral support upon deciding to dispose of the body while Matt was at work.

The horror of this mission must have puckered my face.

“I can do it for you,” Michelle said.

She was no-nonsense. A nurse and mother of two, she represented strength and determination. Honed by 12 years of domestic warfare, she was a hardened professional. I very nearly agreed.

“No, this is something I have to do myself,” I said. “But, if you don’t mind standing next to me while I do it…”

One by one, we scaled the ladder into the attic. Blood, guts, maggots – I pictured them all as we shuffled in the direction Matt had indicated. I wore surgical gloves and carried a 40-gallon black trash bag, the kind you can’t see through once the refuge is inside.

And there it was: A small white rat on its side, eyes and mouth wide-opened. A pile of rat poison pellets, apparently scattered by the landlords, was nearby. No blood, no guts, no maggots. The creature simply looked stuffed. But it wasn’t stuffed, I learned as I attempted to wiggle a sheet of cardboard under the body; it was so light little could be left inside.
The body didn’t possess enough heft to settle firmly on the cardboard, and I watched, eyes saucer-wide, as it repeatedly rolled off.

“Oh God! Oh God!” I said.

“Use this,” Michelle said, tearing off a wad of packing paper. Gloves or not, using a mere piece of paper for such an adjustment wasn’t nearly enough protection between my trembling skin and the rat’s lifeless coat, but I took the paper from her. Sucking in a deep breath, I brought paper and cardboard together under the remains in a scooping motion. Michelle held the trash bag as I dumped the deceased in and then completed a spastic jig of disgust.

So I guess, technically, a slight possibility existed that the “mutant squirrel” feasting outside could somehow kung fu her way past our ferocious house cats, find a way into the attic and suffer the same fate as her poor brethren. At least Matt was concerned for her safety. I experienced similar qualms when I looked out the window this morning to see the “mutant squirrel” pushing seed out of the bird feeder and into the hands of five or six adorable “mutant squirrel” babies assembled below. So sweet.

All right, Matt: If it means safeguarding those adorable pink hands from certain death in the attic, I’ll relocate the bird feeder.

Hooligans

Scene of the crime

Embedded as they were in a crack of the driveway, the two round masses resembled mushrooms – the dreaded “Death Cap” kind, no less. But how did they get there, directly below the driver’s door of my car? I nudged one with the toe of my sneaker, and it rolled one rotation. Then I noticed the telltale dark specks: cinnamon. I was staring at a pair of donut holes. 

For months, someone (or several someones) has been launching food and empty soda cans in the general direction of my garbage cans. One culprit even shattered an empty glass Peach Snapple bottle at the base of one can. Circumstantial evidence indicated the donut holes were the latest missiles. 

My husband and I live on the downward slope of a major artery into our neighborhood, so we see a lot of traffic. To make matters worse, our postage stamp-sized driveway is sloped as well; We park our trio of garbage cans – trash, recycling and compost – in the far corner, near the curb, because there’s no other flat surface to accommodate them. For some passersby – including, apparently, those displeased with the variety in their Dunkin Donuts Munchkins assorted pack– the cans’ position represents an irresistible target. For others – that segment of the population that learned to drive behind the reins of a horse-drawn carriage – the cans (and the bright orange traffic cone marking their presence) inexplicably become invisible.

“BAM!”

The sudden cacophony of a crash doesn’t startle Matt and I anymore. The cats don’t even raise their heads from the couch.

“There goes another trash can,” I’ll say.

We’ve amassed a collection of side mirror covers, shell casings spent as our plastic cans suffer yet another barrage of assaults. Some days, I’ve arrived home to find the cans completely upside down in the middle of the street, their contents strewn.

A few weeks ago, we managed to identify the owner of one side mirror cover.

“My wife hit your garbage can!” An angry neighbor shouted from his car window. The admission puzzled Matt.

“Um, maybe she should drive slower and look where she’s going?”

The man did not seem to appreciate this unsolicited advice; He gunned his engine and roared down the hill.

The most recent collision, however, sounded slightly different than all the rest. 

“Ahhhhh!” I shouted, running for our front door.

Naturally, Matt was alarmed. Sore from a 30-mile hike the day before and deep under the hypnotic spell of Sunday Night Football, he was in the process of melting into the sofa cushions when I suddenly leapt from my chair.

“What’s wrong?! Where are you going?!”

I didn’t answer. There wasn’t enough time. Barefoot, hair eschew and dressed only in pajamas, I raced down the two flights of steps leading to the street. And that’s when I saw them: Four pubescent hooligans, skateboards tucked under their arms, hooting with villainous laughter and skipping away up the hill.  All three garbage cans lay upended in the street.

“I see you, you little brats!” I hollered. “I’m calling the cops!”

Then, for good measure, I picked up the orange traffic cone and placed the narrow end to my lips.

“You better run! I’m calling the cops!” I shouted.

By this time, Matt had managed to lumber down the steps.

“What happened?”

“They knocked over the garbage cans,” I said, lowering my makeshift megaphone. “Want to come with me as I track them down?”

“Do I have to?” he moaned.

I left Matt to pick up the cans and ran back up the stairs and into the house. I wriggled into a bra and slipped on a pair of pants; I likely wasn’t going to report the scallywags to any authority higher than their mothers, but I’d rather not do so with untamed breast missiles and in sheer shorts.

Turns out, I need not have hurried; the perps had rounded the corner and were strolling leisurely in the middle of the road. I pulled the Prius alongside and rolled down my window.

“Wait!” I shouted.

I expected the hooligans to scatter like cockroaches, so I was surprised when my sudden presence failed to unnerve them. Instead, a 12-year-old in a fluorescent yellow shirt turned toward me and spread his arms wide as if to say, “What the hell do you want?!”

“I saw you flip my garbage cans. Where do you live?” I demanded, adopting what I felt to be my most authoritative voice. Admittedly, this line of questioning was probably not the most cunning.

“I didn’t do it,” Fluorescent Shirt said.

“I saw you do it. I’m calling the cops.” And you’ll end up in prison on a chain gang and never get into college, I nearly added.

The kid merely shrugged and continued walking up the hill. 

“Hold still while I take your picture,” I commanded.

Despite my threats, I had no idea what to do next. So I followed – at 2 mph. The suspects, brilliant getaway artists that they were, continued walking straight down the road. 

Oh goody, I thought. Perhaps they’ll lead me straight to their homes. Mentally, I began rubbing my palms together in delicious anticipation.

“You’re stalking us,” Fluorescent Shirt said, turning back around to stare me down. He was starting to get on my nerves.

Crap. Perhaps I was, technically, stalking them. I imagined their mothers reprimanding me. In any event, a Porsche Boxster was nipping at my bumper. I pulled over, allowed the car to pass, and steered the Prius back toward my house. 

The suspects were gone! No, not gone. Feebly hiding behind a roadside log.

“I can see you, you idiot!” I shouted as I drove by. “You’re wearing a fluorescent shirt, for goodness sake!”

Red-faced and sweating, I returned home. I probably should have called the police, but I didn’t. If those kids were anything like me at that age, they would find punishment soon enough. If some crazy, wild-haired woman tracked me down and threatened legal action, I’d toss and turn the entire night, terrified my college prospects were ruined. Then I’d confess everything, through a hail of tears, to my mom.

“I’ll call the cops if they do it again,” I assured Matt. “In the mean time, they better not think they’re getting any Halloween candy from this house.”

Unbeknownst to the hooligans, they’ve managed to punish me as well. Another bang. Just now. I race down the stairs. The street is empty, the cans are all in their proper place and I’m standing in the middle of the road -- braless, shoeless and clad in snowflake pajamas.

The mother of all garage sale events?!

Yesterday, en route to release a recovered PHS Mourning Dove in San Carlos (amusingly, the bird actually came with a specific house address, where my avian taxi dropped her off), I happened to drive by a banner advertising what must be The Mother of all Garage Sale Events: the entire town of San Carlos is banning together to peddle secondhand junk! Feast your eyes on the beautiful map above.

The event takes place Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, visit the San Carlos Together community website. I’ll be there with my friend, Kelsey. Meanwhile, our bozo husbands will be hiking 25 miles to complete the Skyline to Sea hike from Big Basin Park to Waddell Beach. They expect it will take them about 12 hours. By that time, we just might be done bargain hunting.

Playing airplane seat roulette

When it comes to air travel, there is no seat assignment as prized as the one within an otherwise empty row. No assignment, that is, except for one of those super-swanky Asian airline Barcaloungers outfitted with heated seating, draft beer dispensing capabilities and an overhead compartment-compatible personal masseuse. But I wouldn’t know about those; I travel coach.

I can recall just two occasions when I successfully bridged the chasm between “sardine” and “first” class. The first upgrade, on a business trip to New York City, arrived courtesy of my employer. My second (and thus far last) taste of the high life occurred en route to Belize, when my husband surprised me with the upgrade on the occasion of our honeymoon. The stewardess served us champagne and filet mignon, but she could have stopped her pampering right after the “snack” course, excited as I was about receiving my very own bowl of complimentary hot nuts.

In coach, not even room temperature nuts are free anymore. So you can understand why plebeian passengers like me yearn for coach’s only luxury. In our eyes, the perks of the empty row are seemingly endless: the ability to stretch across three cushions (and the kidney-poking hardware of their corresponding restraints), the plethora of carry-on stashing space afforded by the undersides of three chairs and ample maneuverability for thrusting a knee into the back of each of their reclined occupants. Best of all is the rare, dual-access to the contentious window shade and the aisle, coveted gateway to bladder relief.

Not to brag, but I recently harpooned this white whale of the airline industry during a six-hour, cross-country flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco.  The Airbus A321 will pack in a total of 185 passengers, but this particular flight contained just 120. So even though fortune had assigned me 31F, a window seat in a row lacking a middle seat occupant, I could not ignore the sweet siren song of desolate row 33.

Wait. Before you call me greedy, know this: The sadistic deities of plane seating roulette owed me this small comfort; When flying from San Francisco to Charlotte two weeks before, those jokesters had positioned me in 15F — right beside The Worst Seat-Mate Ever.

“I just want to warn you: I have sleep apnea and I snore something bad,” said the occupant of 15E by way of introduction.

I didn’t know how to respond to this, and so I simply laughed, nervously. He was a large man in his mid to late 40s, and I could see no reason to doubt his admission.

Over the roar of the twin engines, 15E proceeded to walk me through his childhood, adolescence and career as a custodian for military laptops. He spoke loudly but his voice was deep and served to muddle an already incoherent mumbling, the kind that suggested his tongue occupied too much of his mouth. Aside from some sage advice that I seek employment in Iraq, I had trouble understanding much of what 15E said. I had just managed to perfect my best glazed look of interest when he casually remarked that his wife occupied the middle seat just across the aisle.

“What, you guys just prefer the middle seats?” I asked, dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe such passengers actually existed. Sick.

No, they purchased their tickets last-minute and were unable to secure seats beside each other, 15E said.

How fortunate then, I observed, that a mother and her teenage son were also separated, she assigned to the aisle seat of our row and he to the aisle seat of 15E’s wife’s row.

“That’s my wife,” 15E said to the mother. “Would you mind if we swapped seats, and she sat over here beside me?”

Bu that particular arrangement was certainly not what I had in mind. I panicked.
“You’re gonna make yo’ woman move?!” I interjected, expertly masking my true intentions with some good-natured slang.

“Oh, she doesn’t mind,” 15E assured me.

15E’s wife collected her belongings and settled into the aisle seat of our row. I longingly watched as the thin, quiet-looking mother and son did the same across the aisle. Well, at least 15E could now bore his wife instead of me.

But instead of chatting with his “woman,” 15E began feasting on an enormous, multi-storied bacon cheeseburger, his elbow pumping enthusiastically into my ribcage with each oversized bite. As half of his girth already happened to spill over and under our shared armrest, I viewed this newest development as a calculated attempt to claim even more of my allocated real estate; he was surely expanding and would smother me before we crossed the California border.

I huddled against the window, closed my eyes and did my best to drown out 15E’s 
masticating with my go-to, sleep-in-a-public-place iPod album selection, “Classic Guitar Masters: Six-String Serenades.” I was nearing sleep and the closing strains of “Meditation on Prelude No. 1 of Bach, for Violin or Cello and Piano,” when a ferocious, phlegm-filled snort erupted beside me. I opened my eyes. Sure enough, 15E had succumbed to a food-induced coma. With his head tilted back and his mouth as open as the desert we now flew over, he was treating the entire cabin to a symphony of snot-laced sniffles and honks punctuated by ragged gasps for air.  

15E’s swan song of the flight involved a disappearing act; He suddenly leapt from his seat, vaulted over his wife and hustled into the adjacent lavatory. Minutes went by. 

The line outside the bathroom grew. Several distressed beverage cart patrons took to pounding on the door. But 15E failed to emerge for an entire half hour. I made a mental note to seek out the facilities – should I require them — in the rear of the plane. 

So if the roulette-wielding deities of plane seating reward passengers based on past seat karma, that blessedly empty row 33 was their long-overdue gift to me, I reasoned as my San Francisco-bound flight left the Philadelphia tarmac.

The stewardess stationed in the rear cabin must have detected the lusty glint in my eyes.

“You can switch seats, but you have to wait until we’re in the air,” she said.

It was the same instruction she had given a blond 20-something, a girl who claimed her assigned seat was occupied in a calculated attempt to snag my intended row. 

Dejected, Blondie had retreated to her original seat. Our eyes met across the cabin, and I knew she had not given up. But she was positioned several rows ahead of me; She’d never match my speed.

Like the retort of a starting pistol, the plane’s P.A. system bonged and the “Fasten Seatbelt” icon above my head winked out.

“I’m going to grab that empty row behind us,” I informed 31D in a breathless, conspiratorial hush. He nodded in understanding and stepped out into the aisle but directly into my path.

“The other way!” I hissed, waving him up the aisle. Now he was blocking Blondie’s path.

As Blondie attempted to dance around 31D, I hopped back two rows, unabashedly claiming 33D, 33E and 33F as my own for the length of that cough-filled, fee-riddled, tornado of indigestion-inducing turbulence.

First I strapped myself into the middle seat and feigned sleep until I sensed Blondie’s steely gaze dissipate. Then I leaned over the window seat to adjust the shade and lowered the tray designated for the occupant of the aisle seat.  When the beverage cart made its rounds, I set my drink on the tray and feasted on the chicken salad sandwich my mom had packed for me. Then I flopped across all three cushions and began snoring.