On a CRJ 700 (that’s high-tech airplane speak for ‘small, cramped aircraft that only flies to cities in the Midwest’) if you happen to score seat 17B, the flight attendant sits right next to your face.

As part of its plan to emerge from financial ruin and regain more of its former customer base, United Airlines gives very special treatment to its formerly Premier passengers.  Yes, It places us in the back row of tiny aircraft, smooshed into the half-seats that accompany this fine machinery.  Seats 17B and 17C straddle the even more emaciated aisle, and the flight attendant straps herself into a jump seat that pulls down in between to block the bathroom, that instead of running water, has a big bottle of generic Purell gel sanitizer.

If I turned my head to the right, I could smack the flight attendant a big wet one on her cheek.  The proximity of her face to mine and the gentleman in 17C is enough for both of us to make our own uncomfortably awkward jokes, neither of which approaches advanced beginner on a comedy scale.  If this proximity isn’t enough, she pushes the discomfort one more notch up to a dark brown toast as she delivers the entire round of pre-flight announcements from this position.

Find someone that is sitting near you right now.  Sit side by side so you warm to each others body temperature.  Make sure your partner’s face is no more than four inches from yours. Now,  bring a microphone to your mouth and tell a story that everyone in the vicinity has heard before.  Are you mature enough for this experience? Please report back.

with the sweet sweet scent of lavatory in the air, smooching might be an option...

I look around our packed aircraft and sigh because I believe that flying has lost all of its glamor. In reality, I have no idea. In my head air travel was once all martinis, silver, supple leather, jaguars, and fur-lined hoods, Now we sit in CRJ 700s, round bodies splurged next to one another so that if you popped the roof off the plane and flipped us over we’d be a nicely formed human Jell-O mold.  Jiggle jiggle.

I’m flying from Grand Rapids to Chicago and on to Boston.  My reading material is stranded in my gate-checked bag but I can take in enough by reading the headlines of the USA Today of the man sitting in front of me through the crack between the seats.  I exhaust each page faster than he does because he has the luxury of seeing all of the text.  He’s doing a great job of dominating his air space.  Flying may not be glamor, but there is no argument that it’s not sport.  An elite athlete in the sport of economy-passengering is trained at jumping into line at the earliest possible time for his or her boarding number, manipulating overhead bin space without making eye contact with others, and maintaining the largest sphere of air around his or her seat via body position and reading material.  The USA Today man has played his seat mate for a chump and it’s clear who will not have a place on the podium.

To cap off this fantastic experience, the flight attendant reads off connecting gate information for more people than are on the plane.  Why does she bother?  Do you ever not double check this information once you enter the terminal?  Aside from glorious Virgin America, is anyone experimenting with the flying experience?

It’s now the arbitrary time to shut down electronics.  It’s also my cue for moisturizing my right cheek.  Just in case.