JOHN CURLEY

John Curley’s epic battle for room on an airplane armrest

Jan 3, 2020, 2:18 PM

The competition for real estate in America is cutthroat, and nowhere is that more pronounced than on an airplane armrest, where elbows and forearms jaw at each other for entire flights.

On a recent flight, John Curley found himself in such a battle.

“The guy next to me had the middle seat. So now I’m fighting the guy for the armrest,” he said. “I didn’t realize this, but later on someone said, ‘Oh, you’re so used to flying first class. Whoever has the middle seat gets both arms.”

This was news to Curley, but Tom agrees with this middle seat armrest etiquette.

“I think that’s only fair, because you’ve got your one big armrest, the other guy has the window, so the guy in the middle seat, he’s the poor, unfortunate soul,” Tom said.

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Curley’s fight for the armrest continued, with neither person gaining any ground for the four-hour flight.

“I am fighting this guy like, ‘Okay, So you want to go the front? You want middle of the armrest, I’ll go in front of you,” he said. “So what I would do is I would quickly slide my arm up the armrest, knocking his arm off of the armrest, causing his face and head to drop.”

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Curley found himself with very little options, and opted to bring out the big guns.

“You know how bad I am at this? I’m 57. I’m trying to be a better person in 2020, but it wasn’t 2020 yet. So I couldn’t move his arms. You know what I ended up doing?”

“Farting. As much as I could. I just thought, ‘I’m going to make life uncomfortable for him in a whole different way.'”

“And everybody else on the plane,” Tom added.

Listen to the Tom and Curley Show weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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John Curley’s epic battle for room on an airplane armrest