Shut up, please.
The girl sat, tired, eyes staring blankly ahead. It was her first time on a plane in a while. Two years to be exact. Little things bothered her. Like the way, a male, 60-something year old passenger sitting diagonally across from her would rock his foot up and down incessantly to the beat of the music, his Brooks sneakers tapping against the tired plane carpet, his white knee-high socks, that were only slightly concealed by his jeans, wrinkling up around his skinny calves.
His Bose headset motioning in unison with the sway of his head forward and backward and side to side. She got motion sickness just watching him. Then there was the air drumming and guitar playing. Yes, there was that too. Was he painfully unaware of how much attention he was drawing to himself with his unabashed display of “rocking out.” Why did she loathe it so? Was he secretly a tribute band musician? She doubted it.
Errant thoughts like this consumed her.
Clearly, he was happy and enjoying himself. Why should she feel compelled to deny him that or roll her eyes at his fulfillment, however distracting it was?
In the end, she justified her disdain for his behavior by noting how little he seemed to think of anyone who wasn’t part of his nuclear unit of 2 (wife included). His total lack of appreciation for how his perpetual motion was affecting the guy behind him who was unable to sleep for the entire duration of the flight, because the chair in front of him, in which said passenger was rocking out, was in a state of constant motion, perplexed her. He also had consumed lush-levels of alcohol and upon finishing his chaser of choice, Canada Dry, tapped the flight attendant on the arm as he walked by, with the empty bottle, to signal “take this away.”
That’s pretty loathsome, she thought. She’s right to think this guy distasteful and dislike him, without even knowing him. He’s sucking scarce air out of the flight cabin, keeping people awake on a 5-hour evening flight, and treating service personnel poorly. When he did speak, he spoke loudly and without regard for others — and only to his wife, who was seated across the aisle.
In a way, it was cute she thought, how affectionate they were with one another and the impromptu PDAs they showed to one another after all those years. If she wasn’t so grossed out by the wife’s display of scratching her rear when she stood up while blocking the aisle to close the 1 foot of space between her and her husband, she might have been more inclined for rosy thoughts.
As the girl closed her eyes, trying to drift into other thoughts and to claim her calm, she thought ahead to future plans with family and ideas for writing. She wondered if this man would be on her return flight to Boston. With his Bruins cap and the noise made about visiting his kids in Portland, it was a crapshoot.
