To Recline or Not Recline, it shouldn’t be a question

When our kids were two years old and younger they could ride on our laps in the same airplane seat. Since they are 15 and 17 years of age now I thought the days of having someone in my lap on an airplane were over, I thought wrong.

On the airplane home from Arkansas the other day the plane reached altitude and suddenly I had someone on my lap. OK, it wasn’t really a person in my lap but the person’s seat in front of me. He decided to recline his seat which in turn caused the back of his seat to press against my knees and made my tray table protrude into my stomach. I couldn’t open my laptop completely because there wasn’t enough room for the lid to open up with his seat in that position.

The seats on an airplane can be made to recline but in my opinion it’s something that just shouldn’t be done. There’s not enough room to begin with in an airplane seat and unless the seat behind you is unoccupied or occupied by someone you want to punish you should keep your seat back in the upright position throughout the flight.

While attempting to move my legs during the flight I remembered a funny thing my kids had said a few days earlier.  “Would you rather have really bad body odor that you can’t smell or constantly smell bad body odor only you can smell?”

For all of us it was an easy answer. We’d much rather constantly smell bad body odor than offend everyone else with our bad body odor.  I’m guessing people who recline on airplanes would rather have bad body odor they couldn’t smell but everyone else could.