I had been in Italy for a work conference. I’d had a great time (I was in Italy! Paid for by work!), both at the conference and in Bologna itself, and it was time for my flight back. I’d changed planes in Munich and got on a larger plane for the flight across the Atlantic. When I got on, I had an aisle seat with reasonable legroom. All good. I was one of the first people on, and everyone was loading slowly, so I sat down, crossed my legs (this was 1999, so airlines still had legroom for regular fliers), and fell asleep.

And woke up when the seat in front of me was jammed back into my legs. The guy had sat down and pushed his seat back all the way back, slamming into my knee and pushing my leg back. It really hurt. Plus, it would have been obvious to him that I was there, asleep, in that position, so he would have known what he was doing. I was outraged. But. I was an American woman on a German plane, and everyone around me was a German man. I had no idea what would happen if I yelled at him, but I suspected in wouldn’t end well for me.

I thought, and then realized that I was sitting behind this man, and would be for the next ten hours. Ten hours in which I could kick the back of his seat. Keep in mind that even though his seat was all the way back, I still had about the same amount of legroom as we regularly do today. Also, the seat next to me was open. I could have moved to that one and had no one in front of me, but the principal of the thing mattered to me. I had an aisle seat, I got there first, and I’d been injured.

So I kicked the back of his seat about every five minutes for the next ten hours. Any time I needed to get up, I leaned heavily on the back of his seat to “help myself up”. After about eight hours of this, when I was coming back to my seat, he finally asked me to stop kicking him. I apologized, but explained that his seat was so far back that my normal movement meant that I inadvertently bumped his seat. He suggested I move over one seat. I suggested that he might. He sat back down but didn’t move his seat forward, so I kept kicking him. After about twenty more minutes, he moved his seat forward almost all the way. Hooray! And I stopped kicking his seat.

I doubt he learned a lesson, and I realize I was being petty, but it was satisfying in the way that these things are.