I should be given a medal

So today is the day I fly to my parents' house for Christmas break.  I hate flying.  Not because I have any fear of flying, but because I can't stand being cooped up in the atomically small space of an airline seat, tied in with a seatbelt by Hercules himself, prevented from even breathing or blinking, let alone getting up to walk around.  I'm one of those people that has to always be doing something, and to be told I can't move is fairly irritating.  Add to that the inevitable delays due to weather or whatever, the increased risk of picking up some unknown incurable disease from the guy coughing in your face, and it just isn't a fun experience.

So on my first leg of the flight I am walking down the aisle to find my seat when a guy in front of me makes a motion to the lady sitting in the seat next to mine that my seat is actually his.  (He didn't speak English, and apparently speaking only Spanish makes it difficult to discern the difference between 22F and 23D?)  Anyway, the lady asks him if he will trade seats with her brother, and he apparently understands this (apparently this request is easier to understand than the letters and numbers on the seats), so he starts to make a move toward the seat she had pointed to just a second beforehand.  So my seat has just been given away to someone else.  I speak up, and mention that the seat is actually mine, and the lady seems confused as to what is going on (wouldn't you be?) and in reaction to her confusion she starts to get up to allow me to sit down, even though she had already made it known that she would like to have her brother sit next to her (I don't think she thought I was within earshot of the earlier request).  So I asked her if she still wanted to trade seats, she said yes, and she pointed out which seat was her brother's assigned seat.  Which is unfortunate in a way, because this woman was by far the most beautiful on the plane (and she was single), and she seems very nice.  I rarely have the opportunity to sit next to a single girl, let alone one as beautiful as she... perfect shoulder-length brunette hair, deep brown eyes.  Anyway, as I am settling into my seat the woman in the seat next to my new one starts talking to her husband, seated on her other side, in a voice that would normally be reserved for conversations taking place across the stadium of a football game between two rival teams.  I have no doubt whatsoever that everyone within 6 or 7 rows could very clearly make out everything she was saying, even while listening to their iPods.  Oh boy.  This is going to be a fun flight.

Not only was she loud, she also liked to think out loud.  And read every headline in her paper.  And summarize every article.  Nobody is even listening to her, but she goes on and on.  If I had been actually paying any attention I could tell you about every article in the section of the paper she was reading, with intimate detail. 

Her poor husband is first trying to get some work done on his laptop, then get some sleep, but she just keeps yapping away.   Man, is she loud!  And saying absolutely nothing worth saying.  And she's got one of those voices that makes my hair stand on end... think Fran Drescher, or Janice on Friends.  At one point she was trying to joke with the flight attendant that her husband beats her, but it isn't funny, both because of what she is saying, and the way she is saying it.  And she is very elbowsy.  I stopped counting how many times I got poked in my side after the numbness set in. 

About a half hour into my flight I put in my in-ear monitor headphones, which seal out almost all external noise very well.  Thank goodness I charged my Zune before I left so I had something to drown out the nasal chatter from the woman next to me.  Normal headphones certainly wouldn't have done the trick.

As soon as the flight landed she promptly announced to everyone nearby that she had to get out of the plane immediately, because she only had 45 minutes until her next flight.  Considering that this flight was 2 hours late, I have a feeling that just about everybody on the plane had a connection within a matter of minutes, but, of course, this doesn't occur to her (the attractive woman behind me replied to her comment by indicating she had 5 minutes to make her flight, but this didn't seem to matter).  She then proceeds to boss her husband around like he is a little boy that doesn't know how the egress of airplanes works.  Very embarrassing for him, I assure you.  By this time I think everybody was feeling bad for this guy.

How do people end up like that?  Having absolutely no regard for anyone around them at all?  Treating everyone like they are morons?

So I think I should be given a medal.  I gave up my seat next to a stunningly beautiful and polite single woman to sit next to the loudest, most obnoxious woman on the plane, being poked in the ribs throughout the trip.   Is that deserving of something?