Chit Chat: The Arm Rest and The Middle Seat

I was flying back from vacation with my family recently. Since the little one is under two, he flies as a lap child. The plane was full, so getting a row to ourselves just wasn't going to happen. I was stuck in the middle seat of our row. I hate sitting in the middle seat on the plane. I started wondering, who would sit next to me...would it be a kindred spirit, who's traveled with a lap child and knows how exhausting it can be, or would it be some business person tired from a week of travel, ready to quietly read the paper and snooze for the next 2.5 hours? A few minutes later, my answer cam to me: I was stuck next to the latter. A heavy-set, hairy armed man came tooling down the aisle and stopped by me. He slunk into the seat, and of course, promptly took over the arm rest. It never fails, every time I sit in the middle seat, I end up no arm rest (If you ask me, the person stuck in the middle seat should always get BOTH arm rests).

Now this arm rest is the arm rest that has the button to put my seat back, turn on my headphones, and adjust the volume for the said headphones. It has my seat number on the end of it. Everything about this arm rest says that it belonged to me! But this man felt that it belonged to him...and he was invading MY space! there were many scenarios to reclaim my space that played out in my mind. I could doze off, and oh so discreetly pushing his hairy arm off my arm rest, or I could be more obvious and just give him a really hard jab with my elbow as I took it back, or I could just simply ask for it back. I did none of the above. I simply sat in silence for the duration of the flight, listening to his snoring.