There’s no shame in knowing your limit

There comes a time when — no matter how much it hurts to hear — someone is going to tell you something you’re not going to want to know. But that doesn’t mean it’s shameful, or worse, not the truth, writes Terry Sweetman.

Every submarine movie features a scene in which klaxons sound and men slam watertight doors as they rush to their diving stations.

One of those bulkheads is mounted on the dock at the New York’s fantastic Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum and if you can’t squeeze through the door you aren’t allowed onto the submarine exhibit. You’d be surprised (although maybe you wouldn’t) at how many Americans failed the test.

Oddly, there is no such test for those who squeeze their bulk into our incredibly shrinking aircraft seats.

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I read last week of a Victorian bloke who reckoned he had been “fat shamed” when he was asked to move from his exit-row seat because he required a seatbelt extension.

The need for a seatbelt extension seems to me prima facie evidence that the seat occupant is large.

A Victorian man said he was “fat shamed” in being asked to move from his exit-row seat because he required a seatbelt extension. Picture: iStock

If the flight attendant was rude and embarrassed him by the manner in which she did her job that was fat shaming. If she did tell him he should book two seats in future that was adding insult to injury. However, the fact that he was asked to move from the emergency row seat because he was in breach of the regulations he accepted when he bought his ticket is not fat shaming. It is no more shaming than it is ageist to ask feeble old codgers to move because they couldn’t help in an emergency.

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There comes a time in any life when age begins to tell, when you need a doctor’s chit to renew a driving licence, when some companies won’t rent you a car and when you are whacked with considerable surcharge when you take out travel insurance.

There comes a time that it’s worth accepting your fate. Picture: iStock

There comes a time when the lifeboat drill on a cruise ship is little more than theoretical for people on walkers and in wheelchairs.

And there comes a time when you’re considered just too old, too weak or too beefy to sit in an exit row and wrestle with a heavy window and help people to safety.

My observation is that it’s a pretty inexact science and that seating decisions are often made on the basis of a cursory glance or an overoptimistic promise of physical prowess. The pity is that these things aren’t sorted out at the ticketing or boarding stages rather than in the public confines of an aircraft cabin.

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As with such thing as carry-on luggage, problems are shuffled down the line until they land with a thud.

Some attendants are pretty fierce and strict while others are laid-back to the point of being cavalier. Some are insensitive clods who probably should be running a zebra crossing rather than a cabin full of paying passengers. However, most are there to enforce the rules for the wellbeing of the majority. There is no shame and no shaming in that.

@Terrytoo69