Darrel had never concerned advertising, nor its effect on the subconscious mind. He had no opinion on adverts except for the one occasion in a sports bar when he responded to a drinking John who at that moment was cursing a football broadcast.

Darrel sat beside John, accidentally victim to John’s fury.

“Commercial break. Commercial break. Another commercial break. **** They used to not play so many **** commercials. Let the boys play, God ****.” Are you with me on this?”

Darrel is mostly with not fussing. He is abiding. The blessing of his blackness has given him a saintly patience for injustice, the least of which is modernity’s deteriorating program to commercial ratio. To humor John, Darrel weighed his first and only opinion on advertising. “Some of them are funny, but I could do without the medicine ads.”

John agreed, especially acid reflux medicine that did little for bar food diets.

Darrel had remembered Booking.com, however. His mother taught him not to cuss, so he was especially tickled by their tagline, “Booking.yea,” a possible allusion to F*** yea!

When his mother needed two tickets to see her heart specialist in Boston, he planned their trip on Booking. The airline rates were nearly half the price of Delta’s website. He made no protests to why. Instead he made an unconscious congratulatory fist and mentally whispered, “Booking.yea!”

To compete with budget airlines, Delta now offers economy tickets that include only a ticket. The ticket has no guaranteed seat, no boarding priority, and no coverage for checked bags.

Companies like Booking will buy these economy seats months in advance when the ticket is at its lowest price. Then they lock the ticket and resell the seat at a margin when market prices rise.

Delta recoups the losses of their economy ticket by selling upgrades to economy passengers who want a guaranteed seat position. As such, Delta waits to assign economy seat positions until everyone has had the chance to upgrade. This opportunity times out when the boarding zone is called.

Darrel’s mother, Arielle, required wheelchair assistance. Despite their economy ticket, they boarded ahead of their zone at the suggestion of Delta’s boarding optimization consultants.

Freddy, this is not good,” Flora said in admonishing Cuban tones. “We are not seated together. How did this happen? We can’t have our daughter seated by herself. Don’t they know we have a daughter who is seven and cannot be seated by herself. How dare Delta. We should have flown United.”

Freddy recalled this decision. He opted to test his luck and save the hundred dollar “preferred seat” fee. Now, mere moments ahead of their boarding zone, Freddy upgraded their economy tickets, choosing three side-by-side seats, paying the doubled, two hundred dollar difference to appease his wife, Flora.

I am seated in row twenty-four, seat C. Behind me is Darrel and his mother Arielle, along with the other elders already situated. Ahead of me has begun general boarding and the single-filed throng breathlessly praying for over-head bins. “God, may I please find a space for my bag.”

Here comes Flora, Freddy, and their seven year old daughter riding on a scooter bag: a folding gizmo that is half suitcase, half scooter.

Flora’s assertiveness tells Darrel he is in her seat. She almost thinks to cross-check that Freddy had indeed not made another mistake, but she suppresses the feeling, evincing a boarding pass that shows 25D is most certainly hers.

Darrel assumes the fault and looks not to his printed boarding pass but to the FlyDelta app. Indeed, to his surprise and chagrin, his seat has changed.

“Oh. I am so sorry. You can see my boarding pass originally showed 25D. I don’t know what happened. Mom, mom, we have to move. Our seats changed … our seats changed. Yes, we’re up there. 17C. And you’re 17E. Yes, it’s not together. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’ll help you.”

The flight attendant called ahead to her peer to hold the flow of traffic. The crowd at the front of the fuselage asked why they weren’t moving. Some asked if they would be forced to check their bag.

The bins at row seventeen were already occupied by the overflow from business class. Darrel’s luggage would have to remain ten rows behind their new seats. Arielle, meanwhile, made lousy work escaping the hold of her seatbelt and scooting over the row’s armchair hurdles.

The shuffle had mostly ended by the time Arielle entered, again, the aisle.

Flora had gone scavenging with the flight attendant to find a compartment that spared enough space for the oddly shaped scooter bag.

Freddy and Darrel met in a near embrace as their two bodies occupied the aisle space intended for one. They’d mistakenly opted for a breast-to-breast approach versus the far more chivalrous butt-to-butt.

Arielle made yet more poor work navigating the remaining bodies remnant from before the traffic stop.

Everyone would find their way as everyone seems always to do, but only after a disruptive and clumsy five minutes of chaos.

Upon landing, Darrel would reverse this procedure, waiting for the rows behind them to deplane before retreating backwards to their original seats, to those bins where their bags remained.

On the jet bridge would await their wheelchair whose attendant would curse Arielle’s dotage for their delay. That attendant would also curse the dictates of their iPad’s time schedule, the iPad that was actually an Alcatel android tablet hanging in a rubber encasement from a sling across all bodies of such airport contractors. For what it’s worth, the faults of the tablet's makeup caused more delays than Arielle’s debilities.

I surmise Delta’s seat upgrades earned the company an extra thousand dollars on this flight, for this seat melee happened not only with Darrel but also with the seat to my left, the seat to my front, and two seats to my rear.

We would have missed our takeoff window had Delta not buffered the boarding and departure times to account for the chaos their capital gains cause.

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