My hands are still shaking from a horrendously embarrassing experience, so I am trying to distract myself with some fun and fluff.
Oh, you want to share in my humiliation first? Okay.
I texted the owner of The Kitten to see if Carla could come visit him (“him” meaning the kitten; the owner is a woman). I had recently put her number in my phone, at Carla’s request. She’d (the kitten owner, not Carla) texted me so I would have her number, and I’d added her to my contacts. I tend to add people to my phone as “FirstName LastName,” and then never include any other identifying details… and you are well aware that I have a terrible memory… so there are multiple people in my phone who are now complete mysteries to me. One of these days I should really go through my phone and delete those people.
I clicked on the kitten owner’s name – noting briefly that there was no prior text from her; I must have deleted it – and texted her: Hi, this is Carla’s mom. Is there a good time for Carla to come visit The Kitten?
A few minutes later I got back a series of question marks.
As you may have intuited from my expert foreshadowing, I texted THE WRONG PERSON. Apparently, I have two people with the same first name in my phone. A fact which I have long since forgotten. The one whose name popped up when I started the text was the wrong one.
And I have NO IDEA WHO SHE IS.
Is this an old work contact? Is this someone for whom I’ve done freelance work? Is she a fellow parent from Carla’s school? Is she a board member I’ve interviewed for a writing project? Is she someone I went to grad school with? Is she a friend of a friend I’d connected with at some point? Is she some sort of service provider I have employed at some point? ZERO IDEA.
I typed back, So sorry! I must have the wrong number!
But what I REALLY should have typed back was, So sorry! I must have typed the wrong FirstName!
Because if she is in my phone, there is a real likelihood that we know each other, and have interacted via phone before. Which means that there is a real possibility that she is sitting there wondering a) why I am contacting her about a kitten she doesn’t know and b) why I am pretending it was a wrong number and c) why I haven’t asked her how her work/family/life is.
But I have no idea who this person is, or why she is a contact in my phone. I even googled her and I swear I have never seen her before in my life. But she was in my phone. So we must have known each other at some point!
All I can do is hope that this person has as terrible a memory as I do, and has long since removed me from her phone, and isn’t feeling hurt/miffed/weirded out by my faux pas.
LET’S MOVE ON TO LESS HORRIFYING TOPICS.
I have some questions for you.
Weigh In #1: What food do you hate, but wish you didn’t? While I am a very choosy eater, I don’t feel particularly bad about it most of the time. I eat enough of a variety of foods that I’m pretty confident I can go to any restaurant or any friend’s house and find something to eat. I’ve never once thought, “I wish I enjoyed lamb. Or beets.” But there are a few foods I hate that I really wish I didn’t.
Tomatoes. I hate tomatoes so very, very much. But they are one of those wildly ubiquitous foods that show up all the time, in places expected and not. (I cannot tell you how frequently I have encountered tomatoes on a Caesar salad, when they have no place in a Caesar salad.) Life would be so much easier and more pleasant if I just liked tomatoes! Or could at least tolerate them! Even friends who kindly ask about food preferences before they invite us over sometimes have tomatoes in their offerings, and I am just so very weary of being that picky person who doesn’t like tomatoes.
Oatmeal. I cannot bring myself to enjoy oatmeal. Outside of oatmeal cookies, which are the sole exception. But lots of people genuinely enjoy oatmeal, and it seems like such a hearty, healthful food. I really wish I liked it.
Eggs. Outside of scrambled eggs – which, even then, I only like a specific way – I avidly dislike eggs in ALL FORMS. But they are versatile and easy and full of protein. I want to like them.
Weigh In #2: What is the best seat on an airplane? I prefer the window, myself. I like being tucked in next to the wall, I like being able to look out during turbulence to reassure myself that we are not in fact falling out of the sky, I like being able to lean my head against a solid surface. But when I fly with my family, my husband is the one who gets the window (although sometimes he swaps with Carla) and I get the aisle. I do not care for the aisle, because it puts me in close proximity to people, and those people tend to be very oblivious to the boundary between their space in the aisle and my space in my actual seat. The only benefit to the aisle seat is easy access to bathroom breaks. But then again, you have to be the one to pop up and down while the middle- or window-seater squeezes past you to the bathroom. I still remember the time I flew and a woman in front of me refused to swap seats with her row-mate’s spouse, because the spouse was in a window seat. “I have a bum leg, and I prefer the aisle so I can stretch out my leg,” she said. But… you aren’t supposed to stretch your leg into the aisle, right??!?! Isn’t that a tripping hazard? Isn’t that begging for a new leg injury when the drinks cart slams into your shin?
Weigh In #3: What is your worst time-wasting habit? I am already terrible about spending too much time on social media. But more recently, I have found new depths to my time wasting online, which is that I have gotten sucked into watching gender reveals on Instagram. There is literally nothing beneficial about this habit – except that I derive occasional joy from the rare parent that shows true, unbridled joy at the result. Okay, and usually only if that unbridled joy is coming from the male parent, and in response to a pink result. These videos are fascinating, though. There are a bunch that feature the same bearded guy, who must run some sort of company that offers and records these sorts of reveals. There are a bunch where the timing is off. There are a bunch where the couple have other children, some of whom seem very disaffected by the whole event.
The worst – and most fascinating – ones are the ones where one parent is CLEARLY disappointed by the result. I am not faulting someone for being disappointed: when I was pregnant, I was SURE I was having a boy, and I pictured a tiny blond copy of my husband. I got very attached to this fantasy. When we found out that Carla was a girl, I was disappointed. I hope you know that not a single cell of my body is disappointed NOW, now that Carla is a real wonderful human and it has become clear to me that everything I love about her is completely unrelated to her sex. But I get the disappointment. What I find perplexing is recording that disappointment and then posting it for the world to see. Perplexing and fascinating.
Anyway. That is how I have been wasting far too many minutes of my one wild and precious life lately. I blame spring break.
Now it’s your turn. Please weigh in.
I don’t think this is so horrid! You handled it fine 🙂 And contacts are confusing. I sometimes put descriptors beside my contacts and apparently, others do to; I asked a friend for someone’s number and she shared her contact with me and is said “X who lives in house below us”
I wish I liked spicy food. I don’t tolerate spice well at all.
I like tomatoes, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE oatmeal (in fact, just this morning, I said to my husband: “We go through so much oatmeal” – my kids also LOVE it and will choose oatmeal over sugary cereal which is crazy, though they add fruit and chocolate chips and brown sugar to their oatmeal, lest you think they are anti-sugar, and I LOVE eggs in every form but quiche which I LOATHE. I did a blog post a month or so ago and I’m pretty sure I listed eggs as the one kitchen staple I couldn’t live without. Crazy how different people perceive and enjoy food. I also love sushi and know that many, many people find it to be absolutely disgusting. My BIL also HATES tomatoes, and I know lots of people that don’t like eggs.
I like a window seat, but my husband who has traveled so much is VERY firm about aisle seats being the best.
My worst time-wasting habit – is scrolling (blogs, news sites). I don’t think I’ve ever watched a gender reveal?! But I know they’re all the rage. I also don’t have social media, but I do think the time I sometimes spend (not in commenting/genuine interactions via blogs) reading borders on the same experience of social media.
I cannot even get Carla to TASTE oatmeal, which — I don’t blame her, but also AT LEAST TASTE IT. Scrolllllling. It is so addictive. So. Addictive.
I wish I could love yogurt. It’s dairy and protein and quick to have and filling. However, to me the texture is like a blog of grease in my mouth, and I cannot take it.
I like the aisle seat because I get nervous on airplanes and use the bathroom a lot to move around and relieve the anxiety. I usually get the window, so I need to be polite and only get up once or twice a flight. (Not that I fly much.)
Time waster right now are some of those word games (Quordle and Semantle). It’s easy to keep trying, and one has a practice option. Who knew there were so many 5-letter words out there?
As for the text, it could have been someone from a school/social even that got put in at some point in order to get group texts once or twice, and then they disappear from your life. Or the number was reassigned. So don’t sweat it – everyone gets a wrong text now and again.
This is a good point about the phone number, and it might even be that it would have been WORSE if you’d said “Whoops, wrong FirstName!” because THAT MIGHT NOT BE THE FIRST NAME OF THAT PERSON! So then it would be another string of question marks!!
SEMANTLE IS THE DEVIL. Okay, that is perhaps a bit too strong. But I was deep in the Semantle canyon a few weeks ago and have clawed my way out and my life is better for it LOL.
If this is at all reassuring, if someone texted me exactly what you said about the wrong number, I would take that to mean the equivalent of “I picked the wrong person in my contacts.” Like, I TOO would absolutely prefer to go back in time and say, “Whoops, wrong FirstName!” instead. But I think the recipient will understand it that way, rather than thinking you were being weird about her phone number. AND—if it’s someone you don’t recognize, she might not recognize you either, and might genuinely think this is a wrong-number situation ANYway.
I don’t have any foods I VERY MUCH wish I liked, but ones I wish I could appreciate include: cilantro, mushrooms, lobster. People who like those things often seem to get large enjoyment from them, and I would like to feel that way too! But fortunately they are not hard to avoid.
I like the window seat, but only if I have family members in the center/aisle so I can get up to pee—but if I am traveling with family members, it’s usually the kids, and then I give one of them the window, and then I actually kind of like the center—again, only if our row is completely full of family members and not strangers.
My worst time-wasting habit, other than scrolling Twitter, is filling online shopping carts with things I don’t need and don’t end up buying.
Ooooh I also love to fill up shopping carts with things I don’t need and don’t end up buying. That is an excellent time waster, and in many ways JUST as fulfilling as shopping itself.
Cilantro! Why was I one of those people who think it tastes like soap?! It ruins EVERYTHING. That’s a good answer.
1. Beets and bleu cheese. Also olives.
2. Window, since I like to nap.
3. Social media for sure, followed by candy crush.
Beets and bleu cheese do seem to be pretty omnipresent on menus, so I get that.
Oh gosh, that is unfortunate about the texting mess-up. I would have done the same thing and said – ‘sorry, wrong number!’ I have a lot of descriptors in the contacts section like Walter’s Mom (Christine) – I have several of those kind of contacts because I am more familiar w/ the name of my son’s classmate than his actual parents name! And I usually identify myself by saying “Hi this is Pablo’s mom!” So I would be very screwed if I tried to put the actual name of people in my phone with no identifier. I would never find them! Ha! But my memory recall is so terrible since becoming a parent and seems especially bad lately!
First question: I can’t think of anything because I am one of the least picky people, but I end up being high maintenance because I have a gluten intolerance. So it’s good thing I’m not picky on top of that!!
Second question: 100% the aisle. I seem to drink more water than the average person so I end up having to go to the bathroom at least once but often twice during a flight. And I HATE asking people to move for me. I feel absolutely trapped in a window seat. But I will say that is my preferred seat for a long international flight.
Third question: Googling random things. Like “Where is Tyler Schultz/Erica Cheung now?” (whistleblowers that worked at Theranos) or “NCAA #1 seed beat 16 seed” (couldn’t remember the winner of the big upset in the first round of march madness in 2018). Or I will go down the rabbit hole of IMDB to figure out why a character in a show is so familiar to me. Those are just a few examples. Some of the googling is curiosity, some if from the memory failures discussed above.
Oooh I love your time waster! It sounds very educational. And more than wishing I liked any one food, I wish I just weren’t picky. That must be so lovely and freeing! Of course, the gluten issue makes it tricky on another level.
As a Jennifer, I get many, many wrong texts and I never think of it again. My favorite one was when my friend (Jennifer)’s kid texted me to ask me if she could go out with her friends. Texted me instead of her mom! Happens all the time. And if I got your message with what you’d said, I would assume you meant wrong Jennifer by wrong number, not that you had typed a random wrong number and we didn’t know each other at all.
Seafood. I wish I liked seafood because people seem to think it’s this big treat and it is an entire category of food that I dislike. (I am able to eat some fish but never on purpose. Like I would eat it if I were served it but I would never order it on purpose.) I have taught myself to like a bunch of things in the last few decades and onions was a big one that made a difference to the quality of my life, like you describe tomatoes. In so many things! I was tired of being someone who always had to say “no onions please!” Now I actually like them but it took a while. I do have a list of things I am not willing to even try to like. (1. Cilantro. 2. Raw celery. 3. Peppers.)
The best seat on an airplane is the aisle. I like not feeling trapped and I do stretch my legs out into the aisle but only after first checking both directions and I don’t leave them there. Plus I like being able to stand up once the plane lands and occasionally while it’s flying if it’s a long flight.
I’ve lately started watching random videos on Instagram and yes, some of them are gender reveals too. Yesterday I found a duck wearing little duck shoes and I recommend checking her out.
I would love to see a duck with duck shoes. And I am very happy for you that you came around to liking onions. I like onions perhaps TOO much.
I wish I liked melons but I dislike all of them, including watermelon. I also hate sushi and oysters/clams which are very popular in my region. I’ve started making an extra pot of decaf coffee in the morning then sitting even longer fiddling around on the internet. Such a time waster indeed. Everyone was sure my second child was a boy but SHE wasn’t. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed but I had always seen myself with a son. Now I have a grandson which is even better. I have a bad habit of putting only first names in my phone and then have to debate -which Anne or Debbie is the one I want?
I also hate all melons! All of them! And they are so prevalent, especially on restaurant menus. Yuck.
1. Fish. I don’t enjoy any animal protein and am a lifelong vegetarian but fish just seems so HEALTHY so I wish I could like it.
2. Aisle for sure. I cannot stand having to ask people to let me out to pee.
3. Best Fiends is my time waster. I keep playing around with setting time limits and deciding I only play on weekends, etc but alas. Time continues to get wasted. I feel like I might need to seek out some terrible gender reveals now!
I set those time limits too, and then click “Remind me in 15 minutes” over and over for the rest of the day.
I am not picky at all- but there are two things I really do not like, I wish I liked them, other people seem to be enjoying them in lots of varieties.
I gag at the smell and sight of oatmeal/hot cereal. I hate that wet, oaty, smell. I don’t like seeing watery water in the instant kind. I am usually polite and do not comment on other people’s food. However one day at work, I offended an oatmeal chewer by saying, yuck what stinks (before I saw her).
I also do not like any style of eggs, except cooked- like in cake.
Hey- we could have each other over for breakfast!!
Yes! An oatmeal/egg free breakfast! I like it!
Oh honey, Suzanne, darling, there is nothing to be horrified about, in my humble opinion – these things happen all the time and honestly, I would be delighted to receive a text in error about a kitten! I’m sure that person has completely forgotten about it, except in a “aw, kitten” kind of way.
1) I also hate eggs, and since I’m plant-based, it’s no big deal. If there is an egg in a cake or something, I don’t ask about it though. I just eat the cake. God, I’m hungry. I could use a piece of cake. Anyway, I have never ever ever liked eggs, and the thought of eating them makes me feel horky. I loathe onions. I will eat things from the melon family, but I would never choose them, know what I mean? Oh and celery, dear god, I hate celery. That kid who brought ants on a log for preschool snack, I hated him forever. Wait, this was supposed to be about foods I wish I liked, and I don’t wish I liked any of these things. Hmm. Well. Carry on.
2) I prefer the aisle in case I have to pee during the flight. I feel very closed in at the window. You know what this means, we would be amazing travel companions.
3) Time waster…I am trying to just put my phone away so I don’t get caught up in social media. But I love instagram. It’s just so pretty. (I love your instagram especially, all your pretty books!). This is probably my biggest time waster. I do still check in with facebook but I don’t find it as time-sucking as instagram. Probably because people still put up outraged posts and angry things and you know what, I’ll pass.
Instagram is SO pretty and so soothing. And I could really, really go for some cake. I am okay with celery, but my husband feels just as you do. That reminds me: I wish I liked peanut butter. It seems so versatile! It doesn’t make me gag like tomatoes, but I would never choose it.
I once had to explain to Jim at Wells Fargo, where I was refinancing my mortgage, that I had meant to email that photo of my office plant to Jim who I used to work with, and yes, the plant’s name is Seymour, ha ha. If you think that wasn’t awkward!
I don’t handle spicy foods at ALL, and while I don’t wish I could in the sense that they must be delicious, I do wish I didn’t have to be the one asking about how spicy a thing is, and explaining that I really can’t take it even a little spicy. I feel like I’m doing something wrong. Which I’m not, it’s just how I am! (She said, defensively.)
I definitely prefer the aisle seat on planes. The window seat makes sense from a going to the restroom standpoint, but I just need to have one side of me that no one is poking or bumping into. I need to be able to lean, even if it’s against a hard cold wall and it misaligns my whole body, ow.
Parmesan and other similar-profile relatives like Pecorino Romano. It’s ubiquitous and I haaaaaaate it. Blue cheese also, but I feel like that’s a lot easier to avoid and honestly, I’m fine with not liking that one. I’m not a fan of tomatoes either, but gotten to the point where I don’t have to avoid them, I just don’t choose them, so that works.
This is my kind of weigh in!
#0 I’m sure that this person has had worse texted to her than if there’s a good time to come see the kitten. Really it’s the best wrong number text any of us can hope to receive.
#1 Any and all poultry. Not for lacking of trying. Both of my stepsons are horrified by tomatoes so you are not alone. I love tomatoes and I love caesar salads but you are 100% correct that the two should not be combined. Oatmeal is horribly overrated. But I’ll take all the eggs.
#2 I’m Team Window unless I’m flying with one of the kids and then they get the window. My husband is Team Aisle because it gets him extra leg room.
#3 I don’t want to admit to how many hours I spent watching Love is Blind and Married at First Sight in the last month but it’s a lot. In my defense there is a limit to how much of the day that I can spend doing productive things and I need my “brain candy” time. Or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
#3A When my stepsons learned that gender reveal parties were a thing they were also very disappointed to learn that they hadn’t been invented when they were born.
I too have seen quite a few gender reveals on Instagram and I don’t get it. My having baby days are over and nobody I know has had one lately so I haven’t been exposed to gender reveal parties in real life. So what I don’t get is – if the parents don’t know until they pop the balloon/open the box/cut the cake/etc. – who *does* know to fill the balloon/box or bake the cake and how do they know? Does the ultrasound technician arrange this?! The doctor? I’m confused.
I like pretty much all food – what I don’t care much for I can still eat if I have to. There’s really nothing I hate that would make me sick to eat it.
I haven’t flown alone in ages but if I am alone I prefer the window seat. When I’m with my daughter and my husband and we are seated together then I don’t really care which seat I’m in.
Way too much time on my iPad playing games and reading blogs! No Facebook but too much instagram reel watching (see above re: gender reveals).
Put the text issue from your mind altogether. It happens. Actually, my friend two doors down recently invited us, Man-Child and The Girlfriend to celebrate her husband’s birthday. Except she invited someone from her contacts that was NOT The Girlfriend but had the same first name. My friend had NO idea who she was. We were actually hoping this person would show up just to see who she was! These things happen to all of us, is what I’m saying. And if some random person texted you about coming to see a kitten, you’d shrug it off as a mistake. And I’m sure that’s exactly what this person did and never thought about it again.
As an avid peanut butter consumer, I am completely baffled at your distaste of peanut butter. Do you like peanut butter cookies? Or Reese’s Cups?
I’m with you on tomatoes to a point. I don’t care for cooked tomatoes at all. And if they are going to appear on my salad or sandwich, they need to be fresh and not mushy – and I know which restaurant will have the good ones or the bad ones. I can live with celery – as long as it’s not cooked. Or if The Husband isn’t loudly crunching his way through a stalk.
I am a picky eater, to a point. But off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything I dislike that I wished I liked. I guess I’m committed to my dislikes! 😉
I can do either window or aisle – but I do NOT want to be in the middle seat ever.
Time wasting…scrolling Twitter, watching hair tutorials on Instagram and YouTube (why?), playing Wordle, Quordle and a Scrabble-like game on my phone. The possibilities are endless – but these are the few that have kept me from household chores this week.
You are the only other person I have ever heard of besides me that doesn’t like eggs! I don’t like them at all, any way! The only way I eat eggs are in cakes!
The kitten text is hilarious. I put in many identifiers when I meet someone new to babysit or for my girls to babysit which means if I get a text while driving my Bluetooth might say: CINDY BABYSITTING MOM OF BILLY AND BENNY. So that’s fun.
I wish I liked fish. Especially bc of my GF needs. But I don’t. I hate fish.
I prefer the window seat. Makes me less queasy when landing if I can look out at the ground.
I don’t really use social media much but I use FB when searching for a teacher in need of a sitter. During those times I get sucked into gender reveals. Child gets a puppy videos. Soldier parent surprises kid and returns from overseas deployment videos. Also shopping for something online like Amazon. There might be 50 products that match my search . . . so hard to choose.
I think the kitten text is adorable and I would just own it. It’s not embarrassing at all!
I wish I liked beets, now that you mention it. I wish we hadn’t gone so far into “low meat” that now the smell of meat makes me gag. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat chicken ever again.
My time wasting habit is definitely watching YouTube videos of British panel shows. Look, we’ve all got SOMETHING. You watch gender reveal videos. I watch Greg Davies do a bad impression Chris Eubank. 🙂
😂
I think your text response was fine! My go to for situations like that is “sorry, meant for someone else!” which covers a whole range of situations.
Yes, that is a great response!
I don’t have a food dislike that’s really inconvenient. I don’t like green peppers but they’re pretty easy to avoid. When I’m cooking I usually sub celery so there’s a green vegetable with a similar texture. I have the opposite problem with oatmeal– I wish I could eat more of it, but I can’t have too much of any grain at breakfast as it causes my blood sugar to spike. Beth found a special high-protein oatmeal and I can have half a serving of it if I put whole milk and butter in it and pile a lot of other protein around it (eggs, fake meat). I can even put a few raisins in it. But, yeah, I spend a lot of time thinking about oatmeal and how I can manage to eat some without going out of range.
I rarely fly, but window is best, followed by aisle.
I spend way too much time on Facebook.
I will chime in to say that your text response (wrong number) was perfect, and I believe the recipient will understand it the way it was intended. 🙂
The food question I can so relate to, because I dislike most condiments (mustard, mayo, salad dressings, heavily vinegar-y things, relish). That means I don’t like most bbq/picnic fare like potato salad, coleslaw, macaroni salad, etc. I rarely eat salad because I hate the dressings. It makes life awkward for me.
Actually, last night was my latest cookbook club meeting and I asked everyone if there were any other picky eaters there. I mentioned my mayo aversion, and someone suggested Ranch dressing instead, and I had to confess that I hate that too. Oh, and pickles. Ugh. (One other lady high fived me when I said I hated salad dressings so, I was not alone!)
On a different note, one of the cookbook club ladies friended me on FB and I went back and hid my blog post from her. I didn’t say anything bad about anyone (there’s nothing bad to say) but I didn’t know if she would be weirded out about me talking about the club on my blog. I want to do an update post though, and now I’m conflicted!
My time waster is sitting with my cat, Alice, after I get my first cup of coffee. I turn on bird videos on YouTube for her, then I sit there with my phone and coffee and I play Wordle, Quordle, catch up on social media. (She actually yells at me if I don’t do this – follows me and meows loudly until I sit with her.) It’s like having a baby – I have to sneak away after she falls asleep on the couch. This morning it was 10 am before I could get up and eat breakfast!
Alice sounds like an amazing cat and I wish I could meet her. The cookbook club conundrum is so tough! Having a blog gets very weird when there are Offline Friends involved.
I get what you mean about texting a number and having it be the wrong number. My iPhone retains contacts even after I’ve erased them for some reason. And there are some people in there with whom I never want to speak again. So I FEEL this in my bones.
By the way, I really enjoy posts like these. 🙂
1- Mushrooms and blue/bleu cheese
2- Aisle seat
3- TikTok
I have yet to get sucked into TikTok. I suppose it’s inevitable though.
Who among us has not texted or called [even worse imho] the wrong person? And you handled the situation well, so I consider you a role model of proper decorum.
1. Green peppers
2. Aisle seat
3. Twitter
So many green pepper haters – it hurts my pepper loving soul!
I, too, would have been horrified to text the wrong person. What is it about this simple error that makes us feel like the worst human?!
1) I HAVE SO MANY. I am such a picky eater and I wish I wasn’t. It would make the world so much easier for me. Tomatoes are high on my list, too. Most fruits and vegetables. Sushi. Indian food. I could go on.
2) Window seat all the way! I love being able to look out the window during takeoff!
3) Happy Color. I am obsessed with this app.
Oh, I love tomatoes! And oatmeal – but I think it really depends on HOW you make it. I don’t like the prepackaged stuff, that’s just a “mush” of oats. I prefer steel-cut oats, because they stay a little bit chewier and that makes a world of a difference for me. I prepare them overnight (let them soak in soymilk with a bit of maple syrup and cinnamon) and then top them with berries. Maybe give that a try?
I usually go for the aisle seat on flights because I like to get up and move around (and I also secretly hope that when I pick an aisle seat on a long-haul that I might get lucky and get the whole row LOL