No, I don't have Tourette's

My ears perked up on this one: if a flight is completely full, choose the middle seat between two of the most ample passengers you can find. If you can make yourself look as pathetically crammed into your seat as the over-stuffed carry-ons that people seem to think they can jam into the overhead bin, you just might get a refund for your flight. Ok, so that's pushing it a little bit; usually you can ask to be reseated if you find yourself in such a circumstance. It takes a legitimate measure of discomfort substantiated by a flight crew member to convince the costumer service supervisor to refund that portion of your flight. But still, with the end of my traveling privileges close at hand, I'm clutching at any straws however pathetic they may be. And I found myself in this controversial situation recently.

I was more than grateful to make it on an oversold flight whisking me away to Providence, Rhode Island. I took the first available seat...between two P.O.S. No, not pieces of...well, my mom reads this blog, so I'll let you fill in your own blank. P.O.S. is a term used in the airline industry for Passenger of Size. In this obviously sticky situation, an over-sized passenger can be charged for two seats. Telling someone they're going to be charged double because of their size wouldn't be my idea of a fun job; that's why when I worked for the airlines, I was absolutely content to empty the lavs, scrub the galleys, load the over-sized luggage in a cramped bin. Of course, if the plane has unused seats, the passenger can then request a refund.

So what do you think? Yes, it can be embarrassing and emotionally traumatic to be told that you must pay double the amount as an 'average' size person. Think of the person stuck in the middle seat, though. And I do mean 'stuck'. Only the suspicious glare of the tenured flight attendant motivated me to fasten my seat belt. After all, I was so tightly wedged in my seat with upper arms the size of hamhocks on either side of me, no amount of air turbulence was going to dislodge me. I couldn't drop my tray table down without asking my seat mate to lift his arm off the shared arm rest so that I didn't whack his funny bone with the table corner. Any movement to reach the overhead light, replace a magazine in the seat pocket, or retrieve items from pockets (for some reason, the window-seat guy kept repeatedly digging his phone out of his pants pocket, and I had to play dodge-the-flying-elbow), caused over-sized limbs to encroach on my seating zone. Flying non-rev, I have no room (get it?) to complain. But if I had paid $300 to fly for 4 1/2 hours with this limited personal space, I would have been officially a disgruntled passenger, or unofficially an ... well, never mind, my Haldol just kicked in.

CORRECTION: Official term in COS, customer of size. But POS worked better for this post.