I had a wonderful blog post full of twists, turns, jokes and wit lined up for this week. It was all laid out in my head; all I had to do was write it on my return flight from Bermuda.

Unfortunately, I was not able to write that blog post or retrieve my laptop or move even a single inch on the plane. I am not telling you this so you feel sorry for me (Again, I was coming back from Bermuda). I am telling you because making fun of airplane travel is the easiest, hackiest blog post to write, but it was the best I could do with the only things that worked during the two-hour flight – two thumbs and a phone.

The following is basically copied and pasted from a super long note on my phone. Sorry.

“Nononono…yessssss. Nononono NOOOOOO…yessss.” This is Deserae’s inner (and outer) monologue as she watches people walk past our row. Two people in a three-person row is Deserae’s first class since she gets to sprawl out even more than she already does. Nonononono…[silence and fake friendly smile as a man sits in the aisle seat of our row] No first class today.

Even though I have literally hundreds of hours of entertainment with me on my iPad and Kindle, I get irrationally excited whenever I see a seatback TV. Unfortunately, this particular seatback TV is the kind that shows you a commercial for Adam Sandler’s Blended over and over until you pay to make it stop.

Every person on this flight is breaking both the spirit and the letter of the carry-on laws. NOBODY is paying the extra $25 to check a bag today. A guy is repeatedly slamming the overhead bin door. We just watched a girl somehow worm an entire Army duffle bag into an overhead bin. We are no better, since our carry-on may weigh more than our checked luggage. It includes wet bathing suits, four days of dirty clothes and a bag of damp sand collected for sentimental reasons.

The Seat Saver is a device designed to prevent the person in front of you on a plane from leaning their seat back. In the last two weeks, it has twice led to fights bad enough to divert an entire flight, because using a Seat Saver is the most passive aggressive thing someone can do to a stranger. I don’t care. I think it’s fantastic. Unfortunately, I don’t own a Seat Saver, and the person in front of me has taken advantage of this fact by slamming her seat back as far as it can go before we even leave the ground.

Deserae is taking pictures of our plane’s wing again. Have you ever noticed that any time older people who rarely travel show you pictures of their vacation, they always start with at least five photos from the airplane window? Deserae has started that real early in life.

Deserae’s exact words while taking this picture: “Oh, this is a good one!”

This plane has so little legroom, that when I put my book bag under the seat in front of me, I cannot move my legs even an inch. This is unfortunate, because I have neighbors on both sides of me, the seat in front of me is leaned back as far as it can go and…

Deserae is starting to sprawl. At home, our bed does not have two sides. It has one side—Deserae’s—which she enjoys to its fullest extent, while generously allowing me to balance on the edge of the bed for the night. This philosophy of personal space carries over to flights. As soon as the wheels go up, Deserae lifts the arm rest, scoots her butt over to my seat and begins to make a bed (a process that involves flopping around for two hours while spreading more of her limbs into my space).

No leg room.

Less than no leg room.

Impossible to move without causing an international incident.

Now that Deserae is comfortable and the guy next to me is asleep, I am officially stuck. I have two options for the duration of my flight through the Bermuda Triangle: Stare at commercials on the TV two inches from my nose or play Flappy Golf on my phone.

Two commercials keep playing on a loop along with the Blended one. I don’t have a lot of information about them since the headphone jack is somewhere on the armrest that has been lifted, but one commercial seems to involve unappetizing food, and the other is promoting the Air Force Academy. Part of that one involves a soldier’s funeral. Not sure that’s putting your best foot forward, Air Force. Also, I think the Air Force Academy acceptance rate is basically the same as an Ivy League school’s, so I don’t know that they need to be spending millions of dollars advertising in airplanes. I don’t remember seeing a Harvard poster on my last Southwest flight.

I turn my attention to my phone and commemorate this moment by taking a picture of Deserae.

It may look like she has found a full-size bed on our plane, but I can assure you that she has not.

You know how your leg starts to fall asleep when you sit too long on the toilet playing Flappy Golf? No? Just me? Fine, well that just happened.

Deserae wakes up long enough to get water from the drink cart. She takes one sip. “Ewww, that’s disgusting.” She takes another sip. “OK, I’m not drinking that. You drink it.” She goes back to sleep.

I take a sip of the water. It is disgusting.

I beat Flappy Golf (Spoiler Alert: Nothing happens at the end) and check out United’s in-flight magazine. The back includes a menu called “Bistro On Board.” “Bistro” seems like kind of a strong word for something that includes a cold ham sandwich and a $10 Lunchable of cheese cubes.

Deserae pops up for a second and looks at me with panicked, crazy eyes. “What was in that water? Does your stomach hurt? It feels like a knife went through my stomach. I’m dying.” [whispering now] “It’s poison.” She goes back to sleep.

Even though I consumed the entire Sky Mall catalog on the way to Bermuda, I pick it up again. Sky Mall is BY FAR the best thing about flying. Here are my three favorite Sky Mall games:

1. Cover up everything but the picture, and guess the item’s price using Price Is Right rules. Unfortunately, this game requires two people, and my flying partner is currently trying to fall asleep by pushing me off my seat. I move onto Game #2.
2. Find the most egregiously overpriced item in the magazine. There are a lot of contenders here, but I choose the Portable Gaga Ball Pit, which is supposed to be “the latest craze in dodgeball,” but seems to just be a $3,100 blow-up kiddie pool.
   

   It’s a kiddie pool with no bottom, right? Am I missing something?

3. Find the item you’d choose if Sky Mall were to call and offer to ship you one thing, regardless of price. This is my favorite game. After careful thought, I choose the life-size Bigfoot statue for $2,475. Deserae and I live on kind of a main street, and I think it would be great to be known as the Bigfoot house. Any time someone asks where you live, you can just say, “You know that house on Bagley with the Bigfoot in the front yard?”
   “Of course”
   “That’s mine.”
   “NO WAY!!!!!!!”
   New best friend.
   

   If you need any Christmas present ideas…

We’re starting our descent. Deserae finds out my leg has been mostly asleep for an hour and a half. “You might have a blood clot! You could die! Bounce your leg! BOUNCE YOUR LEG!!” Also, she updates me on her stomach (it’s fine now) and the water (it probably wasn’t poison).

When we finally land in New Jersey, I unfold myself and remove our carry-on. I am reminded again that over the past four years, airlines have broken five of our suitcases, but this is still going strong:

Like a gentleman, I always carry our manliest suitcase.

While we’re walking to our next gate, we see this:

The pigeon is mocking us.

It’s a pigeon in the airport. He’s strutting and stretching his wings and flying wherever he pleases. I just thought that was interesting.

LIFE LESSON #34

Don’t plan any work for the airplane. Especially if you’re married to a sprawler.