Airport Oracles
I've sat next to some interesting people on and around planes.
A few years ago, I was at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix very early in the morning, reading a book, when the woman next to me complimented my glasses. Then she showed me some photos of her with a Snapchat filter that made it look like she was wearing similar glasses. We chatted for a bit, and then I got back to reading.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, about a minute later. “I always hate disturbing people’s knowledge. And this (gestures toward my book) is knowledge. But have you ever seen ‘The Nanny’?”
I LOVE the idea that she genuinely hates disturbing people but had to make an EMERGENCY exception to ask me about a 90s sitcom. I’m hooked. Book is closed, all of my attention is on this lady.
I don’t remember why she brought up “The Nanny.” But she talks to me about her two kids, about how she’s going to Chicago for her birthday next week. She’s 27, but she says she already feels 28. (I thought I might know the feelings she was talking about when I turned 27 and 28, but I still don’t.)
“When you have kids, it’s like you spend three years staring at your baby,” she tells me. “And then you look at yourself and it’s like, ‘Girl, what are you doing?’”
She’s a massage therapist. She loves to follow celebrities on social media to step out of reality for a little bit. (“Keeps me dyin’,” she says.) She’s really proud of her mom, who recently got her driver’s license. When I mention we are going to Portugal, she puts her hand on her heart.
“I want you to have the best time,” she says. “Don’t let anyone ruin this for you. If you’re around anyone who is being negative, just get away from them. I’ve seen trips ruined by bad vibes, and going to Europe isn’t something you get to do very often. Make sure you have fun, and that you do things you wouldn’t normally have the chance to do.”
She tells me she’s the type of girl who likes to have fun and be crazy, because you never know when you’re going to die. That she started hanging out with older people and saw they weren’t afraid to die, and she wanted to be like that. So she kept hanging out with older people until she wasn’t afraid of death anymore.
I tell her I’m impressed. It takes some people a whole lifetime to overcome a fear of death. A lot of people never overcome it.
She says she thinks death must be a warm place. “God wouldn’t put us through all these trials and tribulations on Earth and then send us to someplace awful,” she explains. “We get to party here, so I’m pretty sure we get to keep partying after we die, only it will be better.”
Then she opens her phone and we watch Cardi B’s Snapchat story together for awhile.
A few weeks ago, I was on a plane to Sky Harbor International Airport, when I met another oracle of sorts.
Again, I’m reading, and, again, the woman sitting next to me asks me a question. She wants to know if I am seated with the people I was flying with. She and her group have been split up, and she is asking everyone around us if they are in the same situation. We all are, which is annoying. But first of all, we are flying Frontier, so we didn’t exactly go into the flight with high expectations. And second of all, Jeff is in the seat right in front of me, so I can tap his head if I really need something on the 1.5-hour flight from Denver.
I go back to reading and she asks me if my book was a horror book.
“Not really,” I say. “I just started it. “It seems like it’s going to be sad.”
“Aw,” she says. “Your boyfriend is reading too. It’s so cute that you both read. I don’t read.”
“Thank you,” I smile. “We both enjoy it. What do you like to do on flights?”
“I won’t lie,” she says. “I get Facebook loaded up so I can catch up on what everyone is up to. All the drama, you know.”
“Girl, good for you.”
I hesitantly open my book again, unsure if she’s done talking. I’m happy to chat, but if we aren’t going to chat, I’d like to read. The woman next to me, whose name I soon learn is Gina, has that special knack some people have: She stops talking to me just long enough for me to settle back into the flow of the story, then starts up again when I’m mid-paragraph.
“How did you guys meet?” she asks.
“We met at a journalism conference in college,” I tell her. “We both studied journalism.”
“Aww,” she says. “So you want to be a reporter, like on TV?”
“No,” I respond. “I’m a writer.”
Gina is incredulous. “Really? You don’t want to be on TV?”
“No,” I laugh. “I’d much rather write. Do you want to be on TV?”
“No way,” she says.
Gina finds out that I’m 29 and don’t have children, which is shocking to her. She started having children at 16, or maybe 17. Now she’s in her 40s and has five grandchildren. “You’re so cautious,” she says. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”
I think it is sort of a funny thing to say, as if having kids beginning at age 16 is the standard, and I’m waaaaay off schedule. I’m not sure how to respond.
“I’m just kidding,” she says. “You know I like you. That’s why I’m talking to you so much.”
“I like you too, Gina,” I say.
“I think you’re going to have twins,” Gina tells me. “On this trip.”
“Wow,” I raise my eyebrows.
“They run in my family,” Gina explains. “And I didn’t have them. So, you have to.”
“Gina, we’re not related,” I remind her with a laugh.
She laughs too. “Girl, I don’t even care.”
She tries to help me think of names for the twins. “What’s your dad’s name?” she asks.
“Karl,” I say.
Gina winces. “Ew, no.”1
I laugh.
“What’s his dad’s name?” she asks, gesturing to Jeff.
“John,” I say.
“No,”2 she shakes her head. “Those are, like, the whitest names ever.”
“I mean… look at us,” I say, gesturing to Jeff and me. (We are white).
Gina, who is Mexican but does not speak Spanish but is determined to learn Vietnamese, has a good laugh at this.
“What’s your middle name?” she asks.
I tell her. It occurs to me she never asked for my first name. Gina’s middle name is Nichole. With an H. Also, Gina is NOT short for Regina do NOT ask.
“If you have twins, you have to tell me,” she says. “And if one is a girl, don’t name her after me. I hate my name.”
“Okay, if I have a daughter, I will not name her after you,” I tell her solemnly. “But how will I let you know if I do have twins?”
Gina tells me her last name so I can look her up on Facebook and message her if I have twins.
“He slept the whole flight,” Gina gestures to Jeff. “I mean, don’t fight with him about it or anything. It might not have been the whole flight.”
“I won’t,” I said. “It’s okay if he slept the whole flight, or if he didn’t. He can do whatever he wants.”
When the plane lands, Gina looks over at me.
“Wow, you didn’t read very much of your book,” she says. She is not making a joke.
I try not to literally laugh in her face. She doesn’t seem to have any idea why I might not have gotten much reading done. Jeff turns around briefly to look at us, and it occurs to me that Gina’s voice has grown continually louder and more boisterous over the course of the flight. She’s drinking out of one of those big Stanley cups. Whatever is in that cup, I’m happy for her.
I’ve read more of my book since then. It’s a good book, but I can read it anytime. Conversations with strangers in airports, if you ask me, can be priceless.
(Also, no twins on the way, to my knowledge.)
Question of the Week: Have you ever had an interesting conversation with a stranger? How would you describe your ideal airplane seat neighbor?
Recommendations of the Week: The book I was reading during my first airport encounter was “Blindness” by Jose Saramago, and it’s one of my favorite books ever. It is sad and disturbing, but I recommend it. I also recommend these healthy pancakes and the Instagram account Zillow Gone Wild.
Sorry, Dad.
Sorry, John.
On a flight from Denver to Hartford, my seatmate and I began to chat after I joked that I would fight him for the one working outlet between us. He eventually confided that he worked at a lumber yard that was haunted by a nineteenth-century-looking man in a duster coat and cowboy hat who appeared at dawn by the uncut tree trunks. He also said that a girl's poltergeist was wreaking havoc on his kitchen cabinets. It was a fascinating conversation, and made the time go by very quickly.
Not my personal experience, but I once worked at an insurance event with a man who had flown from the east coast to California in order to attend. On his flight there, he was seated in the front of the plane & was approached by a flight attendant who explained that they had a passenger in the rear of the plane who was being a bit unruly & asked if he, being a big, strong, strapping man, would mind moving to sit next to said passenger in the hopes that she would settle down in his presence. He moved to seat indicated by the attendant & was subjected to not only verbal abuse by the woman, but she threw a drink on him, spit on him and attempted to bite him. The plane ended up making an unscheduled stop in Phoenix to get the woman off the plane. He played an audio recording of just a few minutes of her rantings and all I can say is that after 10 years answering 911 calls, I have never heard anything more evil & demonic - outside of The Exorcist - as that woman sounded.