The Game

It’s a thankless job, I’m sure, which probably accounts for the perky smiles and liberal applications of lip gloss. But as the flight attendant or stewardess or just abnormally happy woman in a polyester apron instructs her 137 passengers to file in lines A, B, and C, I hardly listen. Surely my headphones leaking Radiohead to my colleagues in the C line isn’t helping me concentrate on a woman whose “good years” left the terminal long ago, but even without the alternative rock, I wouldn’t listen to her. I’m much too involved in The Game.

Now, I should say that before I tell you about this little game, I’m not proud of myself for playing it. Really, I’m not. But I know we all play it, and usually, it’s not on an open-seating Southwest flight. We play it in bars, in freshman dorms, even back in kindergarten. The Game is a little game I like to call “Sit next to the hot girl.”

See, I knew you’ve played it.

I started playing it before I could even really comprehend why I was playing it. But in preschool, after circle time with Miss Betsy, I would go to the math corner to my first flame, Ashley. This strategy of going to the math corner to find girls did not pay off for me in my high school years.

But I knew well enough, even then, to sit next to the hot girl. I assume it is hardwired into our brains, some evolutionary trait that says, “Food. Water. Hot Girls,” which by all means, I have no problems with. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind seeing that order given a nice reshuffling. It would help my waistline.

But with these open-seating flights, my evolutionary drive kicks in again. And while in college, the hot girls tended to have a wide-open campus to flee to when I approached, on these hour long intra-California jaunts, they are more or less stuck with me. This, thus far in my life, is the only way I have found to regularly meet girls.

So that’s The Game, more or less. Again, I’m not proud of it, but instinct has gotten me a long way. Instinct was the one that helped me avoid numerous car crashes. Instinct lets me know when my mother means “two hours and an iced tea” when she says “just a few minutes.” Then again, it was instinct that told me to obey my sleepaway camp counselor’s command to not leave the cabin after lights-out, despite the fact that my bladder was crying out in pain like an overstretched balloon, and the trash can became my only option.

Now, I’m not going to say that I’m a master of The Game. But I do have this version of The Game – the Southwest version – down pat.

The first step is to not be the first on the plane. Let me repeat – do not get in the A line.

I know this is counterintuitive. If you’re a type-A personality, or at the very least not borderline autistic, you know well enough that you want the first choice of seating on that 737, come hell, high water, or loss of cabin pressure.

But in The Game, if you’re the first on the plane, you are leaving your chances to the will of the world, and if you’re me, that means you’ll be enjoying the snoring capabilities of Bill O’Shays and his legendary girth. You’ll watch attractive woman after attractive woman pass you by, as you watch doe-eyed and apprehensive, they will smell out your desperation. A cruel breed, the hot woman.

My strategy is to be nearly the last on the plane. Not last-last, but in the 80th percentile or so. This leaves me with ample opportunity to walk with impunity through the aisle, and when I happen to sit down next to a beautiful woman, I’m not doing so because I’m a desperate man looking for his other half, I’m just looking for a seat!

So I sit down, and oh my, it just so happens that we’re right next to each other, me, still with my iPod blasting some Radiohead (read: Fiona Apple, *NSYNC, or The Notting Hill Soundtrack), and the Hot Girl, thoroughly disregarding my presence.

Then I'm all like, "What up Girrrl?" And then she's all, "Heyyyyy." And then we totally make out and as soon as we land I bounce up out of that piece as quick as I can. The end.