I was exhausted when I boarded a six-hour flight and wanted nothing more than to sleep.
\nOnce we reached cruising altitude, I reclined my seat as far as it would go.
\nA few minutes later, the pregnant woman behind me leaned forward and said she was having trouble breathing because the seat was pressing into her space.
\nI was tired and irritated.
\nInstead of being understanding, I snapped, \u201cThen maybe you should\u2019ve booked first class.\u201d
\nShe went quiet.
\nFor the rest of the flight, I barely thought about it.
\nAfter we landed, a flight attendant stopped me near the exit.
\n\u201cSir, there\u2019s something you may want to read.\u201d
\nShe handed me a folded note.
\nIt was from the woman behind me.<\/p>\n
She explained that she was traveling alone because her husband had been rushed to another city after a serious accident.
\nShe was seven months pregnant, terrified, and trying desperately to reach him before surgery.
\nThe note ended with:
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry I bothered you. I was just scared and couldn\u2019t catch my breath.\u201d
\nI stood there feeling sick.
\nThe flight attendant quietly added that the woman had refused an offer to confront me because she didn\u2019t want to cause a scene.
\nI found her near baggage claim and apologized.
\nShe accepted.
\nBut I walked away realizing how quickly I had judged someone whose worst day I knew absolutely nothing about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was exhausted when I boarded a six-hour flight and wanted nothing more than to sleep. Once we reached cruising altitude, I reclined my seat as far as it would go. A few minutes later, the pregnant woman behind me leaned forward and said she was having trouble breathing because the seat was pressing into …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10333,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10332\/revisions\/10333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}