45 Shocking Moments When Rude Passengers Met Their Match Mid-Flight—and Didn’t See It Coming

This middle seat guy settled in, pulled out a pencil and an oversized pad of paper and started writing. One hand steadying the pad of paper, one hand writing. No problem there, but in the process he stuck his elbow past the armrest. Annoying, but hey, it’s the middle seat, and he was a tall guy, I figured I could move just a little more into the window area and avoid his elbow.

As we get in the air, he settles in, puts the tray down as a writing surface, and spreads his legs wide. Really wide. The type of spread where his knee is well past the boundary of the armrest, and is right against my leg. When he scratched the side of his leg, I felt his fingers, which was not ok. Particularly since my legs are together and next to the wall of the plane.

I try a few tactics. I sit up more, fidget a bit and push back slightly, just enough to remind him I’m there, I figure maybe he’s distracted with his writing, not paying attention. Usually this kind of thing works.

Instead, he shifts in a way that puts the top corner of the big pad of paper just a little into my area. It’s not touching me, but now he’s just taking up just a little more of my space. Almost like he’s trying to get me to see what he’s writing. So, sure, I look. He has very tidy handwriting, so I can quickly see that the page is covered with quotes from the Bible and paragraphs about avoiding temptation and not giving into lustful things.

Now, I have a live and let live view when it comes to religion. I have no problem with anyone’s religious beliefs when they don’t cause any trouble. If he had written in his own space, I would have happily just kept browsing on my phone, enjoying the plane’s WiFi.

But with him crowding me that much, with his leg against mine, his elbow creeping past the armrest again, I was done.

I hunted through videos online. I needed one with bright colors and big letters, with good pictures, and no sound required. Once found, I made my screen as bright as possible and played the video in my lap, in my own space, but close to where his leg was leaning against mine. Right in his field of vision.

I think he must have looked over right when a cartoonish sexy devil appeared complete with “Satanism” displayed in large letters, followed by pictures of pentagrams and various historic images of the devil. Because that’s when the pressure finally left my leg and his elbow found it’s way back into his own space.

It was a rather educational video actually, and I enjoyed learning a bit about different types of Satanism, history, and misconceptions about it that day. But more than that, I really enjoyed seeing the guy continue to glance over and try to move as far away from me as possible for the rest of the flight.

tldr: I used satanist videos to make a guy on flight stop crowding me.

Edited to add: I know some people are so tall or big that they can’t help but use a little extra space. But he managed to not cross the boundary of the armrest for the rest of the flight, so it seems that he didn’t need to cross it to begin with. The aisle seat was occupied by an even bigger tall guy, so middle seat guy didn’t have the option to crowd him instead. 🙂

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