I played the disability card. Well, actually, my wife Susan did it, but on my behalf. She worries about me, tries to make my life easier, so she made the call.
We haven’t flown nonstop in years. Recently, we haven’t flown anywhere that it’s even possible to fly nonstop, primarily Missoula, Montana and Jackson, Wyoming. And always through Chicago, the Bermuda Triangle of layovers (who hasn’t spent an unexpected night in Chicago at some point?). Before that, all of our flights were on Southwest Airlines using credit card points. I don’t know if you can book nonstop using points, but we never did. It’s either impossible or requires too many points to make it worthwhile. I’m uninformed. Susan does our airline booking.
We’re out of points, so we paid cash for this trip. And the price wound up being much less than we expected. The only downside was an extra fee to book seats. “No, problem,” Susan said. “We’ll log on the minute they open seat selection, and find you an aisle seat.
Aisle seats, I’ve written about this before. Not in relation to airline seats, but at the movie theater. If I feel trapped in my seat by someone I don’t know, my Tourette tics escalate. No, I don’t cuss (out loud), but I grunt, sigh, yawn, and loudly blow my breath up across my eyes. Annoying for someone sitting next to me, and agitating for me, which escalates my tics even more, creating a feedback loop until my brain explodes. Besides the audible stuff, I crunch my eyes together long and hard and scratch my skin until I bleed.
The afternoon before our flight, Susan realized we forgot to reserve the seats and told me there were only middle seats available unless we paid an upgrade fee. Trying to be a good sport, I told her not to worry about it, even as I imagined myself crammed between two other passengers, crushing my eyes together, grunting and scratching and bleeding.
For a minute, I considered paying for an aisle seat, but eighty bucks! Plus, without Susan as a middle seat buffer, my tics would still be fairly bad. Susan called the airline. “Yes, we messed up, forgot to reserve our seats.” “Yes, his tics will be bad.” “No, we don’t really want to spend that much money to upgrade our seats.”
And then it was done. Upgraded for free. I imagined the airline employee thinking they dodged a bullet. No crackpot with Tourette Syndrome yelling “Fuck!” or “Bomb!” for five hours freaking out the other passengers. No in-flight interventions. No unscheduled stop in Duluth to eject a normal looking gray-haired couple who are anything but normal. No bad airline press as yet another person with Tourette Syndrome is ejected for something he can’t control.
And my problem was solved; except I felt ugly inside. Did we overplay the disability card? My tics are nothing like what the airline employee probably envisioned. Am I guilty of perpetuating Tourette Syndrome stereotypes to get something that I wanted? Is launching a pity-party worth avoiding five hours of discomfort? No one likes sitting in the middle seat. Did I grasp at a handy but misunderstood excuse to avoid the thing that thousands of airline passengers just suck up and endure every day?
I’ve only fallen back on this strategy two other times in my life. One time was while flying. The other, a long-held steadfast position that I can’t share an office at work. Whenever the office conversation comes up, I feel like a prima donna. But I simply can’t stand the thought of sitting next to someone all day, all week, all year, grunting non-stop.
Was the free upgrade justified? Let’s start a conversation. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Image: Me conspiring with the crow in Portland’s International Rose Test Garden. For more info on the crow, read: Wildwood: Follow the Crows
