Airplane food, even when in first class or purchased, is not the greatest. Knowing this, Live Longer and I decided to purchase some cheese, crackers, popcorn and chocolate for our flight home. We stopped at Bedford Cheese Shop in Brooklyn and carefully selected these items. “We need a cheese that pairs well with airline wine. Red wine, not white,” I advised. The cheese expert found a cheese he felt would best compliment the wine and we excitedly made our way to the airport.
We stopped in the Sky Club for a couple of glasses of wine prior to boarding the plane, however, opted against any hummus, celery, oils, snack mix or white chocolate covered pretzels because we didn’t want to taint our pallet with bulk food delights.
We confirmed our seats and, although we had not been upgraded to first class, we were pleased to see we were seated next to each other in economy comfort.
After a few glasses of wine, we made our way to the plane that had been boarding for some time. As we approached our row I noticed a woman was in my seat. I approached her and kindly informed her it appeared she was in my seat. “No, I’m not. This is my seat,” she told me, loudly and adamantly. “Let me double check my ticket,” I informed her. “If they screwed this up again. They always screw this up,” she said. maintaining her same tone. Live Longer and I stood aside while I verified that which I already knew – this bitch was in my seat. She was traveling with her husband and wanted to sit next to him, but I could clearly tell he was ready to disassociate from her in any setting. Plus, we purposely selected seats next to each other and we had our food bag ready to share.
The flight attendants immediately got involved and confirmed she was, in fact, in my seat. She begrudgingly packed up her stuff, gave her husband a look, he packed up his stuff too, and they temporarily moved to the galley. “This is his fault,” she said, directing her anger to her husband. “Sorry, it’s just that we also want to sit next to each other and we bought cheese to share,” Live Longer told her. She looked at our Bedford Cheese Shop bag and smugly said, “It isn’t Saks.”
It wasn’t Saks, but we couldn’t wait to crack open our coach class cheese; not because we were hungry, rather, because we knew the smell would permeate the cabin and the passenger in the place of least resistance was the woman formerly in 20E – now moved to 20B. We’re pretty sure the B stood for bitch.