Being here is nice, getting here not so much

I secured the cheapest flight ever on this trip to Bosnia, but I paid a price for that -- I flew via Chicago, a four-hour add onto the journey.

My mother did not send me out on a 24-hour trip without supplies. I had to use a second carry on for the lunch she packed -- a redolent mix of meatball sandwich, almond pastry, pudding, fruit and cookies.

It was, in my mother's nomenclature, a "substantial" lunch befitting a big trip. I felt like an immigrant travelling to a new world.

Flying from Chicago to Munich I was seated next to a 6-foot-2 blonde with legs up to her large breasts and hair down to her right ass who, naturally, did not swallow a morsel. She sipped a little wine and she devoured her beefy boyfriend in the window seat. In contrast, I wolfed down meatball and cookies spewing crumbs and looking like a troll. She unfolded from her seat after nine hours and floated from the plane. I was winkled, stained and rumpled. Why can't I get an ugly woman for a seatmate I grumbled to myself.

As I did that bridesmaid's-tempo waltz down the crowded isle of the plane from Munich to Sarajevo I realized my wish had been answered.

There in the middle seat of Row 10, the same row where I held a ticket for the isle seat, sat one of the largest women I have ever seen. Her breasts alone had to be 75 pounds. She flowed from that middle seat onto seats of either side of her. There was no way to put the chair-rest between us down. She had it wedged upright and my seat belt was buried under at least 300 pounds.

I disgustedly pushed myself into the crack of space left for me and looked around for someone to make a face at. But then I looked at her. And she looked so miserable and uncomfortable and unhappy, I felt ashamed of my low feelings. She spoke no English so I just patted her arm and said, "It's OK." I hauled myself out of my crack and went to find a flight attendant. "The flight is filled," he said when I asked for another seat.

"No," I said, "It's overfilled." He got me another seat magically on that filled flight.

In the Sarajevo airport, a young man ran up and hugged the big woman who dissolved into tears. I guess that was why she'd put herself through the ordeal of that trip. And I guess you don't have to look like a super-model to feel loved.