Air

A story about plane travel

I had to go back several rows in order to find a suitable aisle seat,but such is the price of flying southwest.  You have to take the good with the bad, I suppose.  If you don’t register online quickly enough, you end up having to wait an eternity to board, and all of the good seats are gone.  The seat I was looking at seemed to be occupied, because it had a computer bag in it, but I wasn’t fooled, for the bag undoubtably belonged to the rapscallion sitting in the window seat of that same row, who was doing his best to seem busy, in the hope that he would not be questioned as to the vacancy of the computer bag seat.  I smiled quietly to myself.  The putting your own bag in the seat next to you trick is as old as time.

“I say, is anyone sitting there?” I asked.

“Well… no.”  Came the forced reply from the gentleman in the window seat.  I sat down.

“Excellent.”  I pronounced, bullying my way into the seat and handing the man his bag.  He took it sheepishly and slid it into it’s storage area.

“I do have one request, though.”  The man said, looking somewhat annoyed.

“Yes?”

“Please don’t talk to me.”

“Hah!” I laughed, “there’s no need to worry about that!”

“Oh really?  Why not?”

“Well, look here,” I said, repositioning in my seat to face him, ” Suppose you were a madman, you know, thoroughly insane.  I wouldn’t know this until I started talking to you, and you began to tell me something mad, like how they found the milenium falcon resting at the bottom of the Baltic sea!”

“Did they really?” he asked disbelievingly.

“Oh yes!” I whispered very seriously.  ”Most certainly!  I read it online after all!  Anyway, suppose you had said that.  You probably wouldnt stop there, would you?  Oh no, not at all!  Crazy is as crazy does they say.  No, you’d go on and on about, oh… any number of things really, and  I’d have to listen to your ramblings for the entire flight!”  I shook my head and opened up a copy of sky mall.  ”No, no, no.  It’s much better just to stay quiet than to talk to you.”  The man looked somewhat taken aback, as if postulating that he may be a madman was somehow insulting.

“Me?  Insane?  Why not you?  Suppose you were insane and I was normal!  What then?

“Well, my dear fellow, you would have fallen into my trap.”

“How so?”  He asked.  I laughed light heartedly and lowered my sky mall, shaking my head.

“By asking me to not talk to you, you would have inadvertently initiated a conversation about not talking!  I would jump at the chance and begin a conversation exactly the same way that I already have!”  The man thought about this for a moment and then stared at me, somewhat frightened.  I began to smile and hum to myself absentmindedly.

The plane reached the main runway and we took off.  Per usual, passengers from further back on the plane gasped in surprise when we left the tarmac, as if they somehow booked their flight and boarded the plane without thinking that we might leave the ground.  It never fails to happen, or to amuse.  The man sitting next to me had been eying me suspiciously during our ascent.  He had leaned slightly forwards for a few times, and then suddenly sat back in his seat.  I suppose he was working up his courage to ask me something, because he finally spoke.

“So are you?”

“Am I what, old sport?”

“Insane?”

“Ha!  No…” I paused, and touched a finger to my chin as I look up in thought at the ceiling. “I don’t think so, anyway.”. I returned to my humming.  The man sat back in his seat and looked out the window for some time.

“You could be, though..” the man ventured after a while.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You could be insane.”

“Look here, I think if I were insane I would know it.”  I replied testily.  ”How could I not?”

“Well, what if you were so insane that you were unable to tell that you were insane?”

I paused and thought for a moment.”What, you mean like that one mathematician who thought he was working for the CIA?” I asked.

“What?”

“You know, that movie with Russel Crowe.  Beautiful mind, I think it was called.”

“Oh!  Yes.”

“I haven’t ever seen that movie,” I stated , “and therefore have no idea what you are talking about.  Sorry.”  The man in the window seat stared at me, his brows furrowed in confusion.

“It’s about this guy,” the man said slowly, enunciating every word as if he were talking to a foreigner, ” who’s so insane that he doesn’t know he’s insane.”

“Oh.” I said.  ”Oh!  I hadn’t ever thought of that.  You may be on to something there.  But why me?  Why not you?”

“I beg your pardon, are you suggesting that I’m so insane that I can’t tell I’m insane?”

“Well look at you!  Sitting here, accusing other people of being so insane that they can’t tell that they’re insane!  Who else would think of such a thing but a madman?”  He stared at me again, his brows furrowed to an even greater degree.  From the look on his face I could tell that this flight had not been going as he had predicted it would.  I waited a while and, with no answer forthcoming, I returned to my Skymall.

“A psychiatrist!” he suddenly shouted, waking up the large woman in the window seat.  She glared at him and hen resumed her slumber.  ”A psychiatrist would think of that!”

“A good point.” I conceded, putting down my sky-mall yet again, “but are you a psychiatrist?”

“Well… No.  But I met one once!”

“Where?”

“On an airplane, as a matter of fact.  She was quite a bore.  Spent the whole flight blabbering about mental diseases and whatnot.  It was quite insufferable.”

“Why did you start talking to her then?”

“Why, I asked her not to talk to me!”

“That’s your problem.”

“What problem?”

“THE problem!  The only problem!”

“I don’t follow.”

“Look here: you say you don’t like talking to peolple on airplanes, right?”

“Oh yes!  I hate it!”

“And on every flight you ask whoever sitting next to you to not talk to you, correct?”

“Yes, every flight!”

“Well your approach is all wrong!  It sounds like you end up striking up conversations with these people by asking them to not talk!”

“By god, you’re right!”

“Of course I’m right!  You’re not the only person In the world who’s met a psychiatrist, you know.”

“Oh?  Have you met one?”

“Of course!  I meet one every week to help me not act so… crazy…”  I giggled at this.

“Ah…” The man said, suddenly confused at this turn of events, and none the happier about it.  He slid back defensively into his seat and crossed his arms as if he were cold.

“Furthermore,” I conjectured, soldiering on through his sudden doubt,  ”the fact that you keep doing this means one of two things: either that you are incredibly stupid, or you actually enjoy talking to people on airplanes, and simply tell them you don’t so they will talk with you!”

“Oh.”  He said.  ”But I don’t like talking to people in general.”  He confessed quietly.  I smiled and nodded.

“Well that settles it then.” I pronounced happily, “you’re just stupid.”  The captain came over the intercom to inform us that we were beginning our descent into Ft. Meyers, and to asked us to fasten our seat belts and put our tray tables back into their full and upright positions.  It was all rather hum drum, really, and certainly nothing that you haven’t heard before, so I shan’t bore you with the details, suffice it to say that the staleness of it brought on another fit of giggles.

“Wow,” the man next to me exclaimed, glancing at his watch after he strapped in, “Did we really just talk the whole flight?”

“Oh yes, yes indeed!”

We landed shortly afterwards, and even managed to get the debarkation going in short order.  The man sitting next to me stood up and waited on me for a while, before finally forcing his way past my knees and into the aisle.  He began to leave, but then paused and turned to me.

“Well, I suppose I learned something today.”  He announced.  ”Talking on planes can be fun after all.”

“Well isn’t that just great!” I replied, smiling ever so braodly, “and you know what?  I think I learned a little something myself.”  The man smiled back at me and nodded, and then left with a wave.  I waited until he was out of sight before I stood up and removed a brown wallet from my back right pocket.  I opened it, and was greeted with a smiling picture of the man who was sitting next to me, resplendent on a new driver’s lisence.

“Oh yes,” I hissed, stroking the picture.  ”I did indeed learn something.  Like your name, mister Henry Hillsborough, and you’re address too!”  I opened my bag, and was greeted by the smiling faces of all of my other friends I had met on airplanes, their pictures resplendent on shiny clean driver’s liscenses.  How happy they seemed in the bright florida sunshine that filtered lazily through the windows.  I laughed as I gazed at them, an appalling, sinister laugh that startled the stewardesses that were still present

“And I think you shall be a perfect addition to my… collection.”

Author's Note

Anything really.

Reviews

[LJW]

Forgive me as I am using voice activated software for this review. I'm sure you know sometimes it doesn't come out right.

I tend to gravitate away from reading short storys. Why I'm not sure but it's a fact nevertheless. I'm glad I decided to read yours.

Johnny Depp would play this character perfectly in a movie. Your writing style seems effortless almost old fashioned but not quite. Some of your word choices like rapscallion made me smile. these somewhat obscure word choices add an interesting layer to that character. The psychological mind f*** was excellent.

I have no suggestions for improvement. 1 of the best short stories I've read on this site to date.