> One row behind us, there was a British family with two screaming kids that kept pushing on our seats. Every time the older kid had to sit in his seat with his seatbelt on, instead of being given free reign to clamber about as he pleased, he screamed at the top of his lungs, while his parents cooed and tried to distract him with talk of happier times.
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The Joy of Airplanes. I can't count how many times I've had something like this happen, but there's one story that sticks out in my memory.

My family was flying somewhere - I don't remember where, since we travel a lot and all the flights blur together, but it was a long flight. My parents were in first class, and my little sister and I were in coach. Lest anyone think this is odd, it's not, at least for us... we liked it. It gave Mom and Dad time together, and they always sent back some yummy first-class food via flight attendent.

So here we are, two kids in coach. I believe this was when I was 15, and she was 11 - we weren't *little* kids, and we were certainly old enough to conduct ourselves properly. My sister got a bit tired, and went to lean back her seat the 3 inches or so they give you in coach.

She put her seat back and within thirty seconds, it was up again. She tried it again, same thing.

I figured something in her chair might be broken, so I tried my chair, figuring we could switch seats. I pushed mine back.

Up it came. But I felt something distinct... the feel of a foot pushing against the seat. I tried it again to be sure. Yup. Whoever was behind me was pushing my seat back up.

I asked my sister to put her chair back again, and I discreetly peeked through the crack between the seats to see...

A kid? Nope. A man, apparently a business traveler, with both seats to himself, casually placed his foot on the back of my sister's seat and pushed it back up.

I was flabbergasted. This guy already HAD two seats to himself, and he was going to begrudge us three stupid inches? He wasn't even a tall guy who might need the extra room. He was just plain being rude, probably figuring that two kids apparently traveling alone would have no leverage against him, the Mighty Business Traveler.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to ask him to stop it, being shy, and I also wasn't sure if this was the kind of thing you called the flight attendant over for. But just then my dad came over from first class to see us (with first-class chocolate chip cookies! yay!) and I whispered the situation to him. He didn't so much as look back at the man, but he told us to not worry about it and to try again later on.

Right after my dad left, my sister put her seat back... and no foot came to push it back up. Sweet. The rest of the flight was uneventful, and we had our three inches of seat reclining without any more problems.

Sosiqui