If your Christmas late evening was marred by a relative knocking over the Christmas tree (again) after too much eggnog…if or you ended up dodging flying turkey bones as one of those always charming inter-family political debates blew up….you likely looked out the bay window at the stars thinking….”Next year, I’m jetting out of the country as soon as the presents are opened.”

Ahh….not so fast.  You were only able to imagine the bliss of escape on a jet to faraway, because you’d not yet heard of the Rude Lady in Seat 20B, American Airlines 875, Dallas-Ft.Worth to Cabo San Lucas.  Prior to experiencing RL20B, I’d been considering working on being less judgmental as my New Year’s Resolution.  By the time we were over Juarez, RL20B had proven ”being less judgmental” was too big a reach for a weenie like me in 2010.

Everything started out okay.  My special one and I are seated in 21 E&F, middle and window, exit row.  The exit rows (20 and 21) are much prized for the extended leg-room.  The exit rows can only be pre-reserved…by very frequent fliers (sort of a hazard pay) and only by signing up very early for the flight.  Which is to say…a passenger goes to a lot of trouble to reserve an exit row seat…like say…Seat 20B…Aisle, Exit Row.  The plane is fairly empty on the ground in DFW until the last five minutes when crowds came aboard.  The flight attendants immediately started in prompting people to quickly take their seats to try and make an on-time take-off.

In front of us a nice older couple has taken their months-ago reserved exit row seats–Seats 20 D and E (Aisle and Middle).  Across the aisle, a young blonde woman travelling solo, has taken her long ago reserved Exit Row seat, Seat 20A against the window.  Thus, Row 20 is full except for the 20B on the aisle and 20F, across the aisle.   (Now you can forget Row 21, since all of the outrageousness has to do with Row 20.)

Move 1:  A loud young man and his wife roar up the aisle.  The man stops at Row 20, starts waving his hand over the couple in front of us as says, “Hey!  You guys don’t mind moving over to the window and middle do you?  I’d like to have this aisle seat so I can (this is a quote) “Holler up to my friends up there?…And, this way I can sit with my wife.”  Not knowing what was to come, the sweet couple said, “Sure. We’d prefer the aisle and middle, but if it’s important to you, we’ll move over.”  Which they did…thinking the Rude Guy was through messing with them. 

But, they’d be wrong.  Once settled across from each other on the aisle, Row 20, the husband turns to the nice couple to his right who’d accommodated him by switching from their preferred aisle and middle, to a middle and window on Row 20.  Now, this guy makes a fresh proposal: “Say, you guys wouldn’t mind getting up and switching with my friends up in Seat 14E (center) and 12E (center), would you guys? Me and my friends, we’d like to talk on the trip.”  (I’m taking down the quotes as we fly).

The sweet man in 20E answers in an admirable tone,  “But sir, you’re asking us to give up extra leg-room Exit Row seats for middle seats…” he said, thinking that would be enough.

But no.  The Rude Guy says, “Come on, now.  Me and my friends, we just want to sit together.  See we’re traveling with our friends.”

Nice guy points out, “But, sir, the seats you want us to switch to are not even close to each other. My wife and I would like to sit together.”

“Gee, Mister,” says Rude Guy, “I thought you’d want to help out.”

At this point, particularly if you’re not a frequent flier, you may be thinking….this doesn’t sound like all that big of a deal. 

But then, of course…. You are assuming what the rest of us on the plane (and this party of six had by this point buried all other conversations with their ‘hollering’ back and forth from the front to the back of the plane)….we, like you, are assuming that the Rude Woman who plunked down in 20B across the aisle from her Rude Guy husband….we’re assuming that the Rude Woman had actually been assigned Seat 20B…that she had pre-reserved the premium seat.  But we…like you….like the flight attendant would be wrong.  And when the woman who had the assignment of 20B, who’d been given a temporary seat by a flight attendant who’d been in a hurry to get the plane off and who had assumed she’d been mistaken about her seat….when this woman shows up to claim her seat 20B….that’s when the fun starts.

Tune in for Part Two: Rumble in the Skies Over Mexico.