Preferred Seating

“All the seats are the same size.”

She was right about that. But she was missing the point — a common mistake of an inexperienced air traveler. In this case, size doesn’t matter as much as other factors. Such as leg room.

“The aisle seat is the best,” I responded.

“I want a window seat,” she pleaded.

My daughter and I had flown together since she was five. In those early years, being the accommodating dad, I acquiesced to her window wishes. On crowded flights this meant that I was relegated to the middle seat in order to sit next to her.

These days, of course, most flights are crowded. Among the sacrifices we make for our kids, I considered this seat concession to be huge. The center seat on a two-hour flight is purgatory for me. There’s always at least one elbow that can’t find a home.

My little girl is now 13 and I rationalized that, for this most recent trip, it was time to push her a little out of her comfort zone. If she wanted to sit in the window seat, she’d have to accept the fact that a stranger may end up occupying the center seat between us.

At first, she didn’t understand what my problem was with the middle seat. That’s when she pointed out to me that the seats were all the same size.

Realizing that anything I said at this point in our discussion would be received with a healthy dose of teenage skepticism, I opted instead for third-party validation. After settling in our seats, her at the window, me on the aisle, I told her to watch which seats filled up first as the rest of the passengers boarded. I thought this could be a good lesson of how a marketplace works. The best fruit gets picked first.

After all of the other passengers had boarded, our center seat was still open, though every aisle seat and window seat in the plane was taken.

I still wasn’t sure she got what the big deal was. After all, we had plenty of room with the empty center seat between us. I told her that this was, in fact, a rare treat; it was like having a play room for the flight. She thought that was funny (in a parent sort of way).

As she put on her headphones and retreated to staring out the window, I thought about the other examples of middle seat dynamics in my life.

In college, it was the front row in the lecture room. The seats in the back were my preferred perch, leaving the late arrivals, easier pickings for the professor, to fill in the seats up front.

In my first job, it was the office closest to the boss. The veterans all gravitated to spots further way, closest to the exit doors, the easier to avoid detection of a late arrival or early departure.

I’ve seen the same dynamic at play in church. The rear pews usually fill up faster than those up front. I suppose the thinking is that if God is going to do any smiting he’ll start with the first row.

At entertainment venues, on the other hand, it’s the exact opposite. The higher priced seats are up front and sell out quickly. People don’t pick the nosebleed seats because they enjoy nosebleeds; they pick them because they’re either the only seats left or the only ones they can afford.

On the return flight, she had already adapted to the new seat reality. There wasn’t even any discussion as we took our preferred seats, leaving the toxic center seat open. We were traveling on Southwest Airlines, which boards passengers in A, B and C groupings. We, thankfully, boarded in the A group.

As the last of the B passengers sucked up every remaining aisle and window seat, the forlorn C groupers entered the crowded plane. The flight attendant announced via the intercom that this flight was completely sold out and those now standing should just take the first open seat they saw.

“That C on your boarding pass” she quipped, “stands for center seat.”

Ouch.

Dennis Lane co-hosts “and then there’s that …,” a bi-weekly local news podcast on hocomojo.com, and blogs about stuff around here at wordbones.com.