I spent the past 3 days in New York City visiting some of my favorite people. More to come on that in a post sometime in the hopefully near future, but first I have some very important musings. Truthfully, I can’t believe I’m writing about this on the interwebs, but whatever.

On the plane back to Seattle I sat in seat 17B.

A year ago this time, I was dating a guy who kept track of all the seats he ever sat in on airplanes(yes, like in an excel sheet). Weird, I know, but for whatever reason once I got over the initial weirdness of this(and several other random things he tracked) – I kind of really liked this oddity about him.

Our dating was short lived – a mere 4 months. Nonetheless it felt significant to me in a lot of ways. It didn’t end particularly well. For my part, I sobbed pretty hard about it for atleast a week, but as with most things I got over it and ending it was most certainly for the best.

Anyways, I took a trip to Hawaii and another to be with my grandmother during our 4 months together and he took several trips for work and we had this little thing we did where we’d text our seat number once we had boarded the plane(and he’d enter his into his excel document). I know, I must sound nuts – but I liked this and when I tried to picture a future with him I really liked the idea of always for the rest of my life sending and receiving texts that said nothing more than 23A or 3C, or heaven forbid 17B.

Seat tracking dude moved to NYC last year. This weekend while I was meandering around NYC with my friends I found myself wondering about him(surprisingly for the first time in a very long while). Once cozied up in 17B and headed back to Seattle I even missed him a little and wished there was someone who cared to know that I was about to spend the next 6 hours of my life in seat 17B.

And so, like it or not, I’m going to tell you(whoever you may be) about the 6 hours in 17B. Writing about dating or past dates on one’s blog is probably a pretty bad idea in general, but I’m really considering making it a regular topic as I have collected some pretty great stories and by great I mean super bizarre.

Back to 17B…

To my left was a woman who I could tell really wanted to chat. I really did not want to chat. So, I buried my head in my book and then eventually fell asleep. For some reason this woman refused to put her bag and coat under her seat. Instead, she held them in her lap the entire flight. It was a pretty big bag too. She sneezed a lot and after each sneeze she would loudly exclaim “Bless me!”.  An hour before we landed I woke up and she initiated the conversation I had denied her the previous five hours by reading and sleeping. Turns out she’s a gymnastics coach and given my collegiate gymnastics career took place mostly in the state of Washington and the gymnastics community is super small we had all kinds of people in common. Oh small little world.

To my right was an older man. From the moment I sat down he seemed physically uncomfortable which I guess isn’t that abnormal for being on an airplane. He didn’t protrude a very pleasant odor. He was also super annoyed that the woman to my left was holding her bag and coat on her lap.  I know this because he muttered in disgust multiple times, “Stupid, she needs to put that stuff under the seat or in the overhead compartment. Ugh.” Eventually, he drifted to sleep. While sleeping he moaned and groaned VERY loudly. On occasion he would lift his hands up in front of him and wiggle all his fingers. From what I could tell this happened while he was fast asleep. The last bit of the flight he seemed to be awake and still uncomfortable. Under his breath every few minutes he kept muttering profanities while shifting back and forth in his seat.

And there you have it people, no fabulous climatic ending – not really even an experience worth writing about, but that sums up my 6 hours in 17B.

Thank you for caring.