While he had been gone, I quietly asked a flight attendant whether there were any empty seats nearby. She had already noticed how cramped I was and found one across the aisle beside a very tall passenger who was traveling alone. With his permission, she moved my belongings and reassigned our seats so the six-foot-five stranger now occupied the place beside him.

The man stared at his new seatmate, then at me sitting comfortably across the aisle. “You can’t just switch things around!” he snapped. The flight attendant remained perfectly calm and explained that both passengers had agreed to the change. The tall man beside him buckled his seat belt, placed his knees directly within his own space, and smiled politely. Suddenly, there was no extra room available for spreading.

For the remaining two hours, the man sat almost perfectly upright. Whenever his knee drifted across the divider, his new neighbor simply looked down at it until he moved it back. Nobody argued. Nobody raised their voice. The lesson apparently became much easier to understand when the person beside him was not a five-foot-two woman he assumed would keep shrinking herself.

When we landed, I stood to collect my bag. He avoided looking at me until I passed his row. Then I smiled and said, “Looks like you needed all that space after all.” The flight attendant tried unsuccessfully to hide a grin. I walked into the terminal with my hip still sore but my mood considerably improved. An hour later, I was holding my newborn granddaughter for the first time. And for once, I was very glad I had stopped apologizing for taking up exactly the amount of space that belonged to me.