You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Jabba the Hut.
After a lengthy ordeal of security check points and xray machines, I am finally situated. My bags are stowed above me. My seat belt is fastened low and securely across my lap. My tray table is in its full and locked position.
I’m seated by the window and I have even seen the luggage guy load my 2 bags under the plane. That’s always a good sign. Time to relax, right?
Maybe not.
The parade of people continues down the aisle. The flight attendant announces the plane is full and every seat will be occupied. If you see an open seat, she says, “take it.”
So I am by the window. There’s a man seated in the aisle seat. And the center seat is vacant.
That center seat is like money on the sidewalk. In a full plane, sooner or later someone is going to take it.
It’s passenger roulette. Who will sit between us.
I am hoping for a woman or a small Chinese man. I want someone with small bones so I don’t have to fight them for the arm rests.
People shuffle down the aisle, like zombies, toting bags and over sized drink cups. I know it’s just a matter of time before someone fills up the center seat and changes the next 3 hours and 18 minutes of my life.
And then it happens.
Jabba The Hut.
A man with a shirt so yellow, he should be a traffic cone. He has a big pumpkin head with big tortoise rimmed glasses. His gut is extended like an Alabama porch. The man’s hair is gravity defying, like Albert Einstein suddenly imagining the theory of relativity. He is carrying a shopping bag with handles.
Please don’t sit here Jabba, please.
Jabba has a large drink cup and a newspaper. He stares down at the man on the aisle.
“That seat taken?”
His voice is foreign, Eastern European, maybe Russian.
I cringe.
He is just south of 280 pounds. He is wearing shorts and I can see he has spilled coffee on his pant leg.
The man on the aisle mumbles something and stands.
The large Russian man squeezes into the row.
Jabba moves like an Earth quake. This black hole of a man, trying to squeeze into a row is like one Solo cup being pushed into another Solo cup filled with beer.
Something is going to be displaced.
He puts his full weight on the seats in front, pushing and grunting like a cave creature.
The people in this row lean forward, upset they are being rocked like a cork on the ocean.
Then – BOOM.
The middle seat and all its wonderful openness is suddenly gone. He explodes into the center spot like Apollo 13 splashing into the Pacific.
Jabba overflows the seat like a large scoop of ice cream in a small cone. Large arms and large legs and large fingers and a big head. Jabba begins rocking in his seat like it’s a see saw. He is trying to find his seat belt that is buried under his large ass.
He is loaded down with bags and papers and cups and he is seemingly rocking the entire plane.
I try and move closer to the window so I don’t have to feel the disgusting weight of this man’s body against mine.
He is hot like a nuclear reactor. I just want space, sir. I paid the same amount for this ticket, I think to myself.
Jabba grunts. His breathing his heavy like fungus.
Jabba continues to search for his lap strap.
His ass is so massive, I suspect it is affecting the instrumentation in the cock pit.
Up and down and back and forth. Jabba’s unfortunate tidal wave of undulating fat continues.
After 30 seconds, Jabba finds his belt.
The previous passenger was obviously not a space creature from a Galaxy far far away.
Jabba groans and fumbles to make the belt larger to accomodate his front porch.
I silently wonder if there is enough material in the plane to accomplish this.
Jabba gets settled and sits back. The entire row moves backward.
His elbows extend over the seat rest into my air space. His elbows are big meaty bags of flesh. It’s like a warm carp trying to occupy the same seat space.
I am annoyed, but decide that it’s just 3 hours and 18 minutes of my life – gate to gate.
I pull my sun glasses down and decide I will sleep.
45 minutes into the flight and Jabba starts stirring. His massive mastodon head bobs forward and then I hear something I have never heard on a plane….
SNORING.
Snoring so loud, so pronounced, it is louder than the Southwest Engine outside my window.
At first I am alarmed.
What the F????
Are we losing pressurization? Is there a cattle stampede behind us?
No it’s Jabba the Hut snoring.
I steal a peek at this foul swamp human.
Then I see something that looks like sea weed protruding from his ear.
I squint thinking that I must be imagining this.
I focus on his ear hole and I see a clump of hair growing out of his head. I’m not talking a few whiskers, I am talking a toad stool forest of hair, so matted it looks like steel wool.
I am repulsed.
I wonder if Princess Lea is on a neck collar being suffocated in a fold of his sweaty flesh.
I push myself against the bulk head and try not to let any part of Jabba touch me.
Over the course of the next 3 hours, Jabba will consume 5 cups of black coffee and question the flight attendant twice why she doesn’t take outdated discount vouchers.
The plane finally lands in Las Vegas and Jabba extricates himself from the center seat.
As his massive ass unfastens itself from the cushion there is a rush of air into the vortex left by his girth.
Other passengers step back in horror as Jabba waddles into the aisle, his serpent tail flailing at seats and passengers alike.
One lady looks at me and rolls her eyes.
That’s right mam.
I just spent 3 hours and 18 minutes with a Star Wars Creature in a Galaxy far far away.
Life’s Crazy™