I join the Southwest boarding line, ranked A-5.
I settle into the exit row, my favorite seat: port side, by the window.
The only advantage you have flying Southwest — that personable, previously "budget" airline — is a willingness to spend more. The cheapest fare to your destination is, what: $199? Business Select costs maybe $449 for the same flight (you can expense it). Why?!? Some scrawny benefits. Automatic check-in. One free cocktail. And, well, you go to the front of the line.
With unassigned seating, that actually makes a difference to your perceived comfort.
On the flight down, a corporate cyborg tried to jump the line, as he gassed on his iPhone, paying no attention to the gate person until she told him, "Sir: your number puts you at the back of the line." He nosed the carpet on his phone till the rest of us passed. In the crime novels of Tana French, set in Dublin, the Murder Squad calls a certain kind of vehicle a "wanker-mobile." Customarily, it's a black SUV driven by Yuppies, if you know what I mean. This line-jumper owns one, pretty sure. He wears the uniform: golf-acceptable pink Bermuda shorts. {Sigh. We've wandered onto "bit of a cliché" highway. Full disclosure: I dressed this way, too. Once. High school, mostly.}
Pink shorts never disconnects with his cell. He's physically bigger than most, but not in a fit way. He smells predatory, from a million years ago. He looks modern; he feels Paleo. His phone conversation is about how he outsmarted his boss and surprised everyone at the conference. OK!
It's a three-seat rank in the Exit Row. Pink shorts claims the aisle seat, still talking on his phone to a clone. The young woman in the middle turns toward me, not him. I could be her grandfather. Which is fine with me: I want granddaughters to indulge!
Pink-shorts-corporate-Kleenex-brain-wishes-he-were-Trump tries to chat her up, extending his "free cocktail" coupon, because he's flying Business Select. It's 11 AM. She doesn't bite. She chooses instead "grandpa safe." Me. To her right.
Happy to comply. She and I share a goal: having a reasonably nice time getting to our destination, even if air travel is a cramped, disappointing misery for the many passengers. All I want to do is nap. We have an idiot in our row; apparently, she and I had expected exactly that anyway. Two out of three vote to ignore him. "Pink shorts, go forth and disappear." Mind meld. More common than you'd expect. He left: "Bye, bye, stereotypical pink shorts!" She was headed for San Diego. "Safe travels." Her. Me. Meant it, too. Pink shorts? Well, "UNSAFE travels" would be a curse. Not modern. But you know I'm NOT modern. My sensibility is post-Mary Shelley, but pre-Darwin positivism. YET: it's a short flight. I'm a believer ... in EVERYTHING!
That was outbound to Baltimore.