Well, my experience is not really the same as yours, but I did have a similarly bizarre experience with regard to another passenger flipping out about something...

A couple of years ago, I was on a mid-evening (like, maybe 7 or 8pm) flight from OMA-DEN (I don't remember which airline) in coach. It was before I was too savvy about airline travel, so I was stuck in a middle seat. I had a board examination coming up in a couple of weeks, and pretty much every spare moment of my time was spent studying. So after we got up in the air, I flipped on my overhead light and started studying. No big deal..or so I thought.

Well, there was some girl in her early twenties sitting next to me who apparently wanted to sleep and was disturbed by my overhead light, but instead of asking me (like an adult might) if I would mind turning off my light, she made a big production of wrapping her face up in her (designer) sweater, thrashing around in her seat, and making little grunting noises of displeasure.

It was strange enough that the passenger on the other side of me seemed rather amused by it, and exchanged meaningful glances with me occasionally...

After I got off, I overheard her opining to her boyfriend on her cell phone that it was a "miserable" flight because some "stupid person" next to her refused to turn off their light so she could sleep. Umm...I didn't REFUSE because she never ASKED me!...

I do understand the need to sleep on late night flights, but come on! This hardly qualified as a late night flight, and was relatively short to boot. Plus if a passenger wants to read, that's what the overhead lights are for, and no one should be expected to sit and twidle their thumbs in relative darkness just in case the overhead light might be too bright for some sensitive soul nearby. It wasn't aimed directly at her. Although in my opinion, it would have been rude to ask someone who was obviously trying to study to turn out their light, I might have been willing to oblige if she had asked nicely enough and explained why she needed sleep so badly on a short mid-evening flight.