Normally, nothing cool or interesting happens to me on airplanes. I refuse to talk to people and always put on my worst face so that they won’t talk to me– because I’m really, really friendly. On my more recent flights, I’ve begun to really open up to those unfortunate enough to sit next to me. This all began on a flight home from college about a year ago.
Friendliness was probably my main mistake, or at least my first one. I got into my seat, the window seat of a three person row, which was okay because that meant I would talk to a maximum of one person. That’s not what ended up happening.
I’d been at my seat for roughly two minutes when I noticed that someone in my row had already called for the flight attendant. This was funny, because we hadn’t even finished boarding yet. She demanded that the stewardess turn on the air conditioning immediately. She was annoyed, but told her that she’d see what the pilot could do. The man sitting next to me said that he wanted to change seats. He had already been out-crazied. He told the flight attendant that he would “roll the dice” that no one would try to take his new seat. She understood immediately.
His decision was validated when the woman turned to me and told me that she had been in the hospital three times this week, and that she could pass out at any time. It was a good thing that I didn’t have my CPR license so I couldn’t be of any help in the case that happened (because clearly, helping in such a situation would be awful). She asked me the time and said, “Oh, well it's about time I take my beta-blockers”, laughing nervously. Although I still don’t know what beta blockers are, I figured that they weren’t real.
The flight continued and, upon talking to this woman, I realized that the flight could end in only one of two ways if we continued to talk – we could either become best friends, or we could end the flight with an air marshall pointing a gun at one of our heads. Luckily, she took a short nap so neither happened, but things did still get pretty weird.
I was just casually sitting at my seat when the flight attendant came up to me and told me to put up my laptop. Defeated, I agreed to put up my laptop. I had a double take when I saw the lady sitting next to me talking to her bag.
Shocked, I looked again and I saw a head pop out of the bag. It was an adorable little dog. Okay, I thought to myself. A dog is weird, but whatever. Actually-- no, it's not okay, most people don’t bring their adorable pets as their carry-ons. I began to fear for my safety.
Was this woman, who had just told me an adorable story of how her pregnant friend was too large to fit comfortably in a plane seat, weird? Perhaps. I think my clue was when I realized that there were two dogs sitting on the seat next to me. “You’re not allergic to dogs, right?” she asked. I wasn’t, but considered saying I was.
Luckily, she ended up going to sleep and no national disaster occurred as a result of us sitting together, but one very well could have. Sitting next to this woman truly inspired me to be the crazy on my next flight. Whether I cause a national incident on my next flight is to be determined, based on how mad I get at Delta.
