Those of you who know me know that when I travel, I sometimes see young children waiting to board my flight, a situation that moves me to feel not a small degree of apprehensiveness. I see in their young faces (or imagine it) that they are the kind of children that cry in shrill tones when cooped up in a small tube-like cabin or when they are two small to realize that if they but clear their ears, the pain that is the source of their cries would simply go away. As I prepare to board I wonder how close to my seat they will sit. I sometimes think fatalistic thoughts that will be just behind me that their melodious cries of suffering and angst will travel straight from their mouths to my ears. Well, no longer do I have to think it might happen. I am in the second to final aisle in the plane and sitting down behind me… yep you guessed it, a sweet but increasingly restless child whose sweet little coos and sounds are slowly but increasingly picking up that piercing quality. I’m not saying that kids don’t have the right to travel with their parents. They absolutely do! I don’t even like feeling this way and writing this blog is but a testament to this uneasy feeling and an attempt to come to terms with it. Maybe I’m so shallow that I don’t like another human being invading my morning travel. Maybe it reminds me of traveling with my children when they were small and my previously felt emotional concoction of pity for my boys as they struggled with the above symptoms and dealing with the expressions on peoples’ faces as they glanced back at me or Ronda. So is it fate that these kids are behind me?
But alas, as I pondered my own folly at feeling the way I do, a guy in the aisle seat across the aisle from me asks the flight attendant if there is an exit aisle seat open. She responds that not only is there a seat open, there is one aisle completely empty, and another has only one seat of the three occupied. I glance at him, then up at the flight attendant, not saying anything, but doing my best Oliver Twist expression that emanates, “Please, ma’am, is there another?” She checks if the seats are still open, returns and takes him forward. She then comes back, takes a knee next to me, looks me directly in the eyes, and asks, “Are you interested in one as well?” Ah Yes, silent communicative forlorn expressions of want, you worked again! “Yes, if there is still room” I reply. “Do you have a carryon in the overhead back here?” she asks. “Yes, slightly forward, but well behind the exit aisle” I respond. “You will have to come back after the plane has emptied and retrieve it. Is that okay?” she asks. “Yes, I’m in no hurry” I respond. If you know me, I like to grab my bag and exit the plane as quickly as possible, as though in a race with some unforeseen opponent trying to achieve some hollow victory. Hmmm, so my patience will be tested after all as I watch people meander down the aisle that are unaware of the hurried race to deplane. But we are pushing back from the gate now. I am in the exit row pondering the fortuitous sequence of events that led to my sitting near a guy who had the initiative to pose the question to the flight attendant. Though my test is a couple of hours away, at the end of the flight, I cannot hear the young child from this vantage point. The extra legroom is definitely a plus as well!
