#107: How to Hold It From the Window Seat

HUMOR

Step 1: Arrive at the airport at the industry standard two hours before. Breeze through security. Spend several minutes stacking bins other people left on the conveyor belt. Try not to wax prosaic about the state of humanity at this early hour. Everyone is in a rush. But perhaps that’s the problem. No, don’t get into it. Put your shoes on.

Step 2: Complete the obligatory post-security fill and spill. Realize LAX has instituted a fun new scavenger hunt for all travelers. Explore the terminals to find 3 of 57 water fill stations that actually work. There’s nothing like the thrill of not knowing whether your basic needs can be met without an $8.89 purchase! The spill part of this step is peeing. Relish your time on a toilet firmly piped into solid ground.

Step 3: Walk past several viable food options in the direction of your gate. You must first check to make sure your gate exists. Is it there? Good. You can never be too careful.

Step 4: Backtrack to one of those viable food options. Pay $21.99 for the teeniest breakfast sandwich you’ve ever wolfed down. Wolf it. Overhear a dad telling his daughter, “Darling, I’m so proud of you!” for cream cheesing her own bagel. Watch her beam and take a big bite.

Step 5: Hike back to your gate. Meander over to the only two empty seats left. Be cut off dramatically by a sprinting teen who takes both seats, one for him and one for the largest Squishmalllow you’ve ever seen. Sit on the floor. Sip on that water you filled.

Step 6: Get in line to board. Make friends with the IU grad and his wife who commented on your Indianapolis sweatshirt. They’ve just dropped their son off for college in LA. They’re boarding your flight to visit their other son in college in New York. Their names are Neil and Betsy and you want to hug them but instead you politely shake their hands as you part on the jet bridge.

Step 7: Settle into your window seat, 42A. Cue up your playlist, put your phone on airplane mode. Mask on, eye mask on, noise cancelling headphones on in that order or you’re going to have to start again. Fall asleep. Let your mouth hang wide open. Who cares? That’s what the mask is for!

Step 8: Jolt awake to the realization that you forgot to pack pajamas. Stay awake due to the prickly pressure in your bladder. You desperately need to pee. Notice now that both your neighbors are sound asleep. Middle Seat has pitched a tasteful tent for one, covering her entire head and body with the complimentary blanket. Aisle has his own eye-masked head resting peacefully on his tray table. Per the social contract of plane seating politeness, this is their right. You don’t get to lean up against the window, take in the birds eye views, and expel bodily fluids on the same flight. You’ve made your choice. Sit in it.

Step 9: When the flight attendant wheels by with the drink cart, pray it wakes up your neighbors. When it doesn’t, request an apple juice even though the thought of her pouring golden liquid into a splashy vessel makes you want to burst. Drink up, you parched masochist!

Step 10: Attempt to read. Realize you can’t focus because you’re about to spray urine all over the reclined seat in front of you. Attempt to journal. Dissociate until you suddenly come to, reading in horror that all you’ve written in three longhand pages is “I have to pee so freaking bad I have to pee so freaking bad I have to pee so freaking bad.” Fall back asleep. Maybe you need to relax your body, stop tensing those bladder muscles.

Step 11: Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! The last thing you need is to be fully at ease. You have pee to hold! That dream of the bathroom was a little too realistic. You really have to get up now because I fear you dribbled a drop.

Step 12: Knock lightly and apologetically on Middle Seat’s tent. Murmur lightly and apologetically, “Excuse me?” She will ignore you, as is her Middle Seat right. Try Aisle. Tap him lightly and apologetically on the shoulder. Nothing, he’s really out. Try a small shake. Perhaps a playful shove. Screw it. Throw him into the aisle! “Excuse me!” a little louder.

Step 13: Oh look, he’s up. Middle is not so just go ahead and step over her. Pray spreading your legs to clear her knees doesn’t release a yellow fountain on her tent. It doesn’t appear she splurged for REI’s weather resistant model.

Step 14: Waddle run to the back of the plane.

Step 15: Wait in the painful line for the toilet sucker of death to be free of other passengers. Gently remind your bladder that yes even though we can see the toilet room you’re not actually on the toilet yet if it could kindly hold its horses.

Step 16: Enter the plane pot.

Step 17: Release!

This is of course universally applicable advice and not a play-by-play of my recent flight to New York. Hope this helps!

If you’re in the mood for more urine-related lore, might I direct you to #6: Ari Drives to The City?

ily bye,

Ariana