My first commercial flight was at 18 when I took a flight home from college for the holidays. I had flown a couple times before in a small piper cub plane with my dad at the controls but that was it. Money was always tight and our family rarely took vacations. If we did take a vacation it was to Ocean City MD not too far from our home but those were few and far between. My dad was a pilot for a large corporation so it was somewhat ironic I was as old as I was when I took that first real flight into the wild blue yonder.
[Photo credit: Wix Stock Photos]
As the years went on I traveled more and more for pleasure and a lot for business. As I look back over the years and think about the conversations I have had with complete strangers it boggles my mind. Before 9/11, travel was fairly hassle free but after that the airlines quickly became one of my top “necessary evils” getting from point A to point B. However, I have logged many miles whether I liked it or not as my career often required it and the majority of the time as a lone traveler. Along the way some of the characters I encountered as seating companions range from overly territorial regarding their seat and surrounding “space” to absurdly talkative and sometimes annoying. Inevitably, over the years at a rate of what I would guess of about 80%, I have been seated next to a “talker”. Those that know me are fully aware that I can find a new friend just about anywhere but when I fly I usually like to hunker down and chill with my earbuds. However, be that as it may, I can safely say I have acted as therapist, coach, advisor, occasional drinking buddy. career counselor and not so great crossword puzzle sidekick on many flights.
Some of the conversations have ranged from childbirthing methods, to whole plane rides dissecting the color and style of the flight attendants uniforms to the mystery passenger that continued to break wind over and over again in the closed confines of my little slice of heaven in row 14 ( Not sure if they were one row ahead or behind me). I have had novice flyers squeeze my hand , been hit on more times than I can count and have been brought to tears over a story of a bad breakup that a woman described in painful detail that made me cry because her story was so similar to mine. Sitting in an airplane is one of the few places people feel completely at ease striking up a conversation and talking with a complete stranger about topics they would never divulge if they actually knew my name or thought they would ever see me again. But that is the curiousness and mystery of it all. It is as if the minute we board a plane we let our guard down and our universal humanity takes over.
I have also had the privilege of sitting in first class a time or two but no one is sharing break up stories or looking for career advice. The seats are wider and the service better but the stories and personalities along with raw humanity you experience in economy class is an unfiltered piece of Americana. Air travel has unintentionally made me a more well rounded human but not just because of the travel to new and different places. I am more well rounded because of the people I encountered from all walks of life, cultures, races and ages. When we take our seats we are sitting in a melting pot of diversity and should embrace it. You never know what you may learn or how a conversation with a stranger may change you. It really is like a box of chocolates because you never know who you will be a captive audience to when you fly.
Not sure when I will venture back to the rat race of air travel again but when I do I undoubtedly will have the pleasure of sitting next to someone who may be a talker but this time may be muted wearing a face mask due to this pesky coronavirus in what can only be described a the “new normal”.
XO & #StayCurious
Commenti