UNITED WE'RE PREGNANT

Our post Thanksgiving flight from Boston to Los Angeles was rife, rife I say, with problems.  

United Airlines decided to pull a holiday switcharoo with our airplane.  Because the flight was not at capacity, the airline just said fuck it...and they put us on a smaller plane and because of that everybody's seats were changed.  Meesh and I still had our ECONOMY PLUS SEATS (don't get excited by the word PLUS.  You're still in coach but you have some bragging rights over the lesser folk in regular coach.  You know when you walk onto the plane and you go through First class?  You can totally see how cocky everyone is.  I say it from experience.  Everytime I sit in First Class I get super arrogant and all of my flying fears are out the window.  Like you can't crash in First Class or if you do it's a more refined crash?  Well, anyway, you can kind of pretend you are in the poor man's first class in Economy plus.  You can flex your legs whilst the Coach Folk pass by en route to their terribly uncomfortable seats.)

That said, our seats were changed and we were not happy about it.  Meesh was very Santa Clausian pre-flight.  She helped a bunch of people who were also scattered all over the plane do seat swaps and the reunions were a lovely thing to see.  We thought, of course, all of that good Karma would come back to us.  We got on the plane.  Five rows away from each other.  I asked everyone around me (well, only the economy plus people because like...who would talk to a Coach person.  Eww.)  and no one offered a solution.  Then, I rang to call button.  The flight attendant told me to figure it our amongst ourselves.  The fuck is this?  Lord Of The Flies?  Lost?  So, I stand up and I say it...I used it..."My wife is six months pregnant!!  Is there anyway someone would be Thanksgiving enough to let a guy sit with his pregnant wife!!"

The two men in the exit row (even more leg room) behind me stood up and said "take our seats."  I was so thankful.  The only thing I had on me was a small bag of Sour Patch Kids but I offered them up as a sign of gratitude.  Suddenly I hear Meesh in a loud whisper say "Do their seats go back?"  I respond "What?"  Meesh continues "Sometimes exit row seats don't go back."  I said "Do you really want me to ask them that?"  Meesh nodded yes.  I did.  They said the seats do.  I could see it in their eyes "give an inch...take a mile."  Do the seats go back?  The pregnant greed.  

So, we sat in our seats.  Two plush seats.  Not a row of three...just two.  In a spacious exit row.  I could not understand why these guys would give up such comfortable seats.  So I spent the next 30 minutes looking over one of the guys' shoulders to see what he was reading, see if he was fidgeting or sweating and praying that he was not going to blow up the plane.