The Disability Card

/ Jeff Cann

I played the disability card. Well, actually Susan did it, but on my behalf. She worries about me, tries to make my life easier, so she made the call. We flew to Portland recently, Oregon, not Maine. A long flight, probably about as long a flight as you can make from Baltimore and still be within the continental United States. When we booked our flights, you might have thought we won the lottery. Nonstop! Wooo!

We haven’t flown nonstop in years. Recently, we haven’t flown anywhere that it’s even possible to fly nonstop, primarily Missoula, Montana and Jackson, Wyoming. And always through Chicago, the Bermuda Triangle of layovers (who hasn’t spent an unexpected night in Chicago at some point?). Before that, all of our flights were on Southwest Airlines using credit card points. I don’t know if you can book nonstop using points, but we never did. It’s either impossible or requires too many points to make it worthwhile. I’m uninformed. Susan does our airline booking.

We’re out of points, so we paid cash for this trip. And the price wound up being much less than we expected. The only down side was an extra fee to book seats. “No, problem,” Susan said. “We’ll log on the minute they open seat selection, and find you an aisle seat.

Aisle seats, I’ve written about this before. Not in relation to airline seats, but at the movie theater. If I feel trapped in my seat by someone I don’t know, my Tourette tics escalate. No, I don’t cuss (out loud), but I grunt, sigh, yawn and loudly blow my breath up across my eyes. Annoying for someone sitting next to me, and agitating for me, which escalates my tics even more, creating a feedback loop until my brain explodes. Besides the audible stuff, I crunch my eyes together long and hard and scratch my skin until I bleed.

The afternoon before our flight, Susan realized we forgot to reserve the seats and told me there were only middle seat available unless we paid an upgrade fee. Trying to be a good sport, I told her not to worry about it, even as I imagined myself crammed between two oversized passengers, crushing my eyes together, grunting and scratching and bleeding.

For a minute, I considered paying for an aisle seat, but eighty bucks! Plus, without Susan as a middle seat buffer, my tics would still be fairly bad. Susan called the airline. “Yes, we messed up, forgot to reserve our seats.” “Yes, his tics will be bad.” “No, we don’t really want to spend that much money to upgrade our seats.” And then it was done. Upgraded for free. I imagined the airline employee thinking they dodged a bullet. No crackpot with Tourette Syndrome yelling “Fuck!” or “Bomb!” for five hours freaking out the other passengers. No in-flight interventions. No unscheduled stop in Duluth to eject a normal looking gray-haired couple who are anything but normal. No bad airline press as yet another person with Tourette Syndrome is ejected for something he can’t control.

And my problem was solved; except I felt ugly inside. Did we overplay the disability card? My tics are nothing like what the airline employee probably envisioned. Am I guilty of perpetuating Tourette Syndrome stereotypes to get something that I wanted? Is launching a pity-party worth avoiding five hours of discomfort? No one likes sitting in the middle seat. Did I grasp at a handy but misunderstood excuse to avoid the thing that thousands of airline passengers just suck up and endure every day?

I’ve only fallen back on this strategy two other times in my life. One time was while flying. The other, a long-held steadfast position that I can’t share an office at work. Whenever the office conversation comes up, I feel like a prima donna. But I simply can’t stand the thought of sitting next to someone all day, all week, all year, grunting non-stop.

Was the free upgrade justified? Let’s start a conversation. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Image: Me conspiring with the crow in Portland’s International Rose Test Garden. For more info on the crow, read: Wildwood: Follow the Crows

21 thoughts on “The Disability Card”

    • Thanks Magaret, Intuitively, I Know it’s better for everyone, and because we got to the airport absurdly early, we probably would have wound up with equally choice seats, but it’s still hard to say “I need special accommodations.” It doesn’t feel like who I am.

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  2. I don’t think you did anything wrong, or overstepped any bounds. What you did made the flight more pleasant for you and the people around you. I bet there are far more times when you opted to ignore that disability card, and you suffered just to live up to some imagined standard. The airline certainly don’t need that extra however many dollars – I’ve noticed in the years we have been flying back to the UK for visits how the costs have only risen, and prices added to things that used to be just part of the experience. I once wrote a sketch where the flight attendant explains how to feed coins into the meter when the mask falls from the ceiling, so that you’ll get oxygen. Don’t forget to feed your meter before paying for the oxygen of those around you….

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  5. The suffering–even the contemplation of the suffering–sounds most unpleasant. You have much lived experience to back up your concerns. Seems no different to someone with an anxiety issue needing an accommodation. Glad you got a good result. Partners are wonderful.

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  8. Good for you! I was for sure hoping you were either going to buy the seats or tell them you needed help to fly comfortably. I think you did the right thing. Do you think of your Tourette’s as a disability, normally? (If that’s nosy, don’t answer, I am asking out of interested curiosity only. I have in my past a “trauma” that I rarely think of as a trauma, although sometimes I really do. So I feel these things are not *always* clear cut.)

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  9. The airlines have fracked the fare system so they can put pressure on everyone to pay at every juncture. The request and outcome were reasonable. Susan is a star.
    ~
    I’m backtracking now to read the crow Link.
    Cheers,
    DD

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    • It seems to me that the airlines are really making a money grab these days, so I looked up Southwest Air (my carrier) 2025 financials. They earned well less than 3% profit margin. I agree the outcome was reasonable, but it’s still hard to ask. It feels like admitting defeat.

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  11. I think Susan did the right thing. First, I think charging extra for certain seats is a scam that airlines get away with. So, getting it for no additional charge is okay with me . . . because frankly, there should be no additional charge. And in the end, it benefitted more than just you.

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