My least favorite seat on an airplane is the bulkhead row.
The front row of the poor boys’ section. That’s where I found myself assigned
on a crammed-full flight last month from
For three hours I could not fully extend my long legs
because the carpeted wall between me and First Class was six inches too close
to my nose. And I missed the tray that normally drops down from the back of the
seat in front of you. All the way to
My lack of comfort was offset, however, by my amusement at the comic drama that played out in front of me. Passengers back in the seats where I wanted to be probably didn’t even notice, but I had a ringside seat to a micro-study in human greed.
American’s airliners come equipped with a blue twill
curtain, which hangs like the veil of the
Two hours into the flight I concluded that the main calling in life for the snooty First Class stewardess was to keep this curtain closed. People who traversed the aisle beside me invariably left it gapped open. Stewardesses who needed more cokes for the under-privileged area of the plane. Coach Class passengers who dared to visit the First Class john.
Over and over, at least 20 times during my flight, the Keeper of the First Class domain came back not more than a yard away from my face and whipped the blue curtain shut again.
Why? I wondered. What was going on up there in the Holy of Holies that we mere mortals in the cheap seats should not witness? Were they doing something up there they were ashamed of? Or, I mused, was the veil just a devious way to make the rest of us yearn for forbidden delights? Did some marketing wizard dream up this ploy to make the masses covet comforts that didn’t really exist up front?
If so, it worked. On my lowly bulkhead bench I munched stale pretzels, while up front behind that curtain I imagined they ate steak. And I wanted some, mainly because that curtain told me No.