EPTOnce Upon an Airplane
I'd like to start off by saying some background information. I was on a flight to go to my cousins Bat Mitzvah in Virginia; she lives in upper Virginia, on the D.C. border. They live in one of the wealthiest areas of Virginia, and so my parents were ok with me flying out to see my cousins family. These cousins are probably my closest in terms of my caring for them, but they are, solely familial wise, about as far as one can get in terms of cousins. They are my 5th cousins once removed technically. I was flying up there with no family accompanying me, and I have a tendency to have interesting things happen to me, this was one of those occasions.
[The story begins with me unbuckling out my seat in my Mom's car and then promplty going into my cities airport. The place is laidback, I've never actually had an asshole TSA agent here, they are all chill, and they are usually smiling; other than the police that check the passports and drivers licenses, because that is srs bsns ofc. Considering how dirty my city is, the airport is surprisingly clean, most likely because we are the FedEx hub of the world. I pass through security, glide through the halls to my plane, and am on the fast track to watching a small girl turn into a mature Jewish woman, all in about 2 hours of services and 1 sermon. Before I go to my plane, I pick up a book, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius
![[image loading]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lij6madf5R1qbz08co1_400.jpg)
I'm a cultured Mofucka
and proceed to go to my flight.
I get on the flight and plop my lime-green backpack filled with headphones, a couple books, some homework, The Game by Neil Strauss, to compensate for my previously cultured book pick. I sit down, on a hot winter's day with the awkwardly hot wind piping in from the sides of the boarding area, in my aisle seat where the hot air funnels through. I finally meet my partner for the next 3 hours of my life, a pretty 30-40 something year-old lady. She sits down, and seems nice enough, ya know. I see that our flight has a bit of time till take off, and she is sitting in the window seat, one seat away from me, a sufficient amount of space that I would never have to think about her existence for the next 3 mind dissolving hours of reading and music, so I put my two books in the center seat; I know our center seat isn't coming, because the plane has closed its doors and has started to taxi, so I think, "why the hell not?"
Almost immidiately the lady breaks the 1 seat corrolary that, not more than a minute before, had made. She asks me what my book was about, and points to the Lucretius book; I try to tell her that its about an ancient greek theory on science that proves to be insanely wrong but is written with an archaic beauty. I pick it up and start reading, begin to question wtf the book is even saying, and she then asks me about the pick up artist book. I try to explain that I had absolutely no idea how the fuck to get a girl, and she nods her head. Then, out of literally no where she starts talking to me about what I want to do in college, I didn't even tell her I was 17, and hell I look like I'm 15 at that point. I tell her I like philosophy and psychology, and she tells me that she did stuff like that in college.
Then things take a turn for the interesting. She tells me about how she had a brother. He was an ok dude, not the best. He beat his children, and he was a druggie, but he wasn't THAT bad of a guy. By druggie I mean he abused Morphine or whatever else he can get his hands on, but more on that later. The dude was her brother, a smart guy, and had a family. His wife was pretty, and to be hoenst, up to that point, other than the glimpses of sadness in her eyes or the darkness in the bags of her eyes that seemed to grow as she talked about her brother, like it was killing her to tell me this - or maybe she was dying to tell anyone this - the dude seemed normal. I get that he wasn't the best dad ever, or the best guy ever, but everyone has redeeming factors. Then, she tells me about how things took a turn for the worse. How he fell down a flight of stairs after hurting his son's, with a lisp because of the family issues, feelings and probably physically hitting him. How this flight of stairs caused the brother to break his hip, how breaking his hip caused him to rack up tons of hospital bills. I was just sitting there, nodding at her. My head was bobbing up and down like a water-bird bobber. Finally she tells me that he went in for surgery after surgery, until he went in to his last surgery. Previously he'd bribed some of the staff to get him morphine under the table, you know, for his hip pain, which he abused royally. Not knowing this, the anesthesiologist gave him some morphine, which od-ed the brother into submission. K.O. The brother died there. She told me that with the fakest, most superficial smile prancing around on her face.
She begins to tell me about the nephew, the one with the lisp. He was beaten by the brother, and how her brother was such a promising mind, and how this nephew is just as promising. She described to me his fight with having a lisp; getting made fun of, how her nephew gets all the girls because they think it's cute that he tries to talk to them - yeah, I think we all know that, "AWW SO CUTE god I'd never hit that unless he turned into a not-gay-Neil-Patrick-Harris," reaction goes at some point in our lives. Then I saw the lady actually smile, and it was a little heartwarming to see such a emotive story become a smidge less depressing. She told me how she would talk to him; I can only imagine how terrible it would feel to start holding back laughter at him speaking with a lisp, if I never knew of his story, because I know a lot of people who make fun of lishpshs. She recollected how he said something that sticks with me to this day, that if (I'm going to paraphrase here) "He would just be given a chance to show how smart he was, to show he was more than his lisp, to show the girls that he is worth having, to show everyone how cool and awesome and loveable he was, he would do it in a heartbeat. Like he tries so hard to show his family." She told me how he got all A's in school, how she was sure he would make up for how bad her brother was at being a father, and all the works of how she knew he would be successful in life. How she knew he'd end up happy.
All of this in 3 or 4 hours. She finished by telling me that if I ever got a girlfriend, I'd need to buy her a marmot jacket, because that is all the rage in Connecticut where she lives. I'm guessing it's all the rage for 30 year old married ladies with children to have though, and not highschool girls. I still have yet to buy my girlfriend that jacket, and I still have yet to forget what this lady told me.
Thanks for reading guys, I thought I would say this one this week. I've saved it for a while, and I think now is a good time to remember that everyone has a story, if you just give them the time to tell it (or they can ask awkward questions to painfully move into telling their story).
