Through a Glass Darkly for October 15, 2009
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The groaning sound and the fact that we were circling the Everglades after takeoff told me something was amiss.
The pilot soon confirmed my suspicions when he announced that we were going back to Miami rather than north to New Orleans.
Seeing fire trucks along the runway didn’t frighten me as it did some of the passengers. Different things scare different people. Flying never has concerned me.
However, on another flight last weekend, I came face-to-face with what I consider the worst hazard of commercial aviation. I had to sit in the same row with a compulsive talker.
Luckily, I was buffered by my wife, Mary, who had the middle seat next to the chattering lady. After Mary knocked her knee against mine for the third time, I looked at her. She mouthed the words, “Help me!”
I was grading the prose of LSU sophomore journalism students, but I found some other material in my briefcase that needed proofreading, so I asked Mary for assistance in a voice loud enough for our talker to hear. Mary smiled as she accepted the papers and a proffered pen, but our work didn’t deter our newfound friend. She seemed determined to tell her life story and all of her political opinions. I felt sure religion or stories of her children would come next.
I bent over Mary’s work and pointed out a couple of things, trying to leave the woman in the window seat with the distinct impression that this work needed to be finished before we landed.
Instead of gazing at the clouds, she continued to talk. That isn’t a sexist comment. I’ve been bombarded with the same type of verbal barrage from male passengers.
I wished the airlines still served meals, thinking that would at least slow her down. The tomato juice from the flight attendant only seemed to fuel our seatmate. When Mary finished proofing my work, she tried yawning and closing her eyes, but our determined orator continued as if it didn’t matter whether her audience was awake or asleep.
At one point, the woman mentioned that she was continuing to Fort Myers, which caused Mary to open her eyes and roll them at me, since that also happened to be our destination.
Fortunately, we had to change planes for the final leg of the trip. When Mary and I found our next gate, we looked up to see our fellow traveler coming down the escalator. Mary stuck a newspaper in the seat next to her so it appeared occupied. Like people in a New York subway, we avoided eye contact with the woman.
After boarding the plane to Fort Myers, we sighed in relief when the talkative passenger walked by looking for her seat farther toward the airplane’s nose.
Give me fire trucks and grumbling landing gear anytime.
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