There's been a lot of talk over the past few years about the growth in North

Americans, It's not about the quantity of people. It's about the quantity of cells in each person. Being big for my age, I have always been one leading the trend.

You would think that with all of this expansion going on, companies would consider it when designing their products and services. My experience this past weekend certainly made it clear that airlines have not seen the change in passenger size as a reason to make their seats and aisles roomier. In fact, they have made them smaller.

If that trend continues, I am going to have to start coating my pants with petroleum jelly to make it easier to slide in between the armrests on plane seats.

While I admit to being big, I am not anywhere near the behemoth size of some of my traveling companions. One woman got on my flight from Seattle to Detroit last week and I swear I saw the plane tilt towards the door when she waddled aboard.

It was a four-hour flight spent sharing a row of three seats with two other travelers, one of whom was wider across the beam than I am. I had the aisle seat, the wider load had the center seat and a poor skinny little runt was crammed into the window seat.

I think he might have been begging for help from the flight attendants, but the sound coming from his seat was quite muffled.

In order to accommodate the three of us in the row, I lifted the armrest on the aisle side, and spent the flight perched precariously on the edge of my seat. That meant that I was an easy target for everyone getting on and off the plane, and the flight attendants manning the beverage carts.

I knew I was in for a long hard flight. Even on the best of flights there is an FAA requirement that I will be hit in the head at least three times by backpacks belonging to passengers who have no idea how far the things protrude from their bodies. Add to that the fact that at least one child being carried down the aisle will kick me as he or she tries to wiggle out of the parent's arms.

It's a wonder I don't have a concussion after every flight.

As little comfortable as the width, or rather lack of width, the seats offered, that was not the only problem I faced. The distance between the back of the seatback in front of me and the front of the seatback I was resting against was several inches less than my legs needed. That was further reduced by the woman seated in front of me, who insisted on attempting to recline her seat.

Repeatedly.

She wasn't successful, but she very nearly succeeded at relocating my knee joints to somewhere just a little south of my hips.

Body size isn't the only thing that is becoming supersized on flights lately. I'm always amazed by the number of people who seem to believe that the rule concerning the size of one's carry-on luggage applies to everyone but them. At least one person on every flight I have made in the past twelve months has delayed the boarding of the passengers behind them while they try to cram a twenty-inch wide suitcase into a fourteen-inch high overhead compartment.

Because I was going to be driving for four hours to Dayton, Ohio after I landed in Detroit I wanted a comfortable car that would handle the road in the event of a late winter or early spring snowstorm. I selected what I thought was a mid-sized sport utility vehicle - smaller than a Hum-V but bigger than most cars on the road. At least it looked bigger. The last time I had that little leg room in a car, I was four years old and trying to drive a neighbor's pedal car.

Even then, I was big for my age, and I've been suffering for it ever since.

2006, Gordon Kirkland