Sitting With Strangers

An olympian. A lover. A Steve-Jobs lookalike. A mother. I have sat beside many different kinds of people on flights. What they have in common is the misfortune of sitting next to me. I am probably the worst person to get stuck next to on a plane. To me, flying is a little like getting a root canal. Temporary, yes. But also terrible. A couple hours spent under duress, discomfort, and, in the absolute worst case scenario—meeting your untimely death. I actually don’t know if you can die from a root canal. But flying feels like a root canal that you could die from. And I don’t care how calm of a flier you are, it’s never fun sitting next to someone convinced that you’re all minutes away from your grisly demise.

Sometimes, I think it would be wonderful to be religious. The comfort of it all. To trust that some all-powerful being cares about your life enough to protect you. Or, at least, if they don’t protect you, you’re headed somewhere pretty sweet in the afterlife. I think I could get behind dying in a plane crash then. You have, like, maybe five minutes total of fear and pain. But then you’re in a glittery expanse, popping M&Ms poolside with that one person you always wanted to have dinner with. And during those five minutes of fear and pain, at least you have prayer—something to physically do and hold onto in a time of crisis. I don’t have that. I just hyperventilate while playing WordCrossy. That, and I play Circles by Post Malone on repeat until the turbulence stops. I’m not really sure why. It once got me through a wicked hangover without puking back in 2019, and it’s been my comfort song ever since. I play it during takeoff and touchdown on every flight without fail. Anyways, the point is, I’m a bad seat-neighbor-person. I make people nervous. I’m nervous. And how do I counteract that nervousness? By talking to the person beside me.

When all else fails, the only thing that seems to really help calm me down mid flight is talking to my seatmate. And you’d be surprised just how many people talk back. I mean, really talk. Sure, some people humor me and exchange niceties until I’ve calmed down, but you’d be surprised how many people are more than willing to open up to a stranger. They’ll talk to me the entire flight. Sometimes, for hours. And these conversations take on a form that’s almost confessional. Complete strangers open up to me about incredibly intimate facets of their lives. And I think their openness—beyond the fact that they’ll probably never see me again—is emblematic of how humans on a very basic level crave connection with others. That is the small comfort I find in flying. Talking to people on planes renews my faith in humanity. And, given the past couple years we’ve had, that’s worth a root canal or two.

So I started writing down these conversations. Or, at least, what I could remember of them. Because the world could use a little more connection. And to a degree, each of these conversations shifted my world a little bit. It’s not like they were TED Talks. People just told me about their lives. But still, there’s lessons to be learned from life, even if you’re just listening to someone else’s. So, here’s two people. Their stories. And how those stories shaped my own.

Young Love disguised as an old woman

I’ll call this woman Gertrude, because that’s exactly who and what she looked like. A Gertrude. An elderly, frail lady. You get the picture.

I didn’t pay much attention to Gertrude when I first sat down in my seat. It was the end of Spring Break, and I was on the flight from Atlanta to Hartford, headed back to school. I was with my best friend, a feisty Brit named Lucy, who always held my hand on takeoffs and touchdowns. She was a seasoned flier, used to long commutes between Yale and her home in Liverpool, and something about her boredom on our flights together always soothed me. Within minutes after takeoff, Lucy had fallen asleep, and I was left to find my own entertainment.

My eyes wandered over to Gertrude, who was hunched over her tray table, nibbling away on cheese and crackers, clearly packed from home. It was endearing. Gertrude noticed my half smile and offered to share her snacks. I shook my head no. Still, she seemed to pick up on my interest, because it was Gertrude that spoke to me first.

“I’m so tired. I’ve been traveling for hours, and there was the longest line at the airport.”

In terms of in-flight distractions, talking to Gertrude was ranking low on the list. I wasn’t exactly expecting her to give me the juicy stuff, and besides, the flight was smooth. Nevertheless, I bit. I asked Gertrude where she was coming from.

“Costa Rica” Gertrude said this without ceremony. Like it was somewhere you’d expect a 70+ year old woman to be coming back from. Somewhere like Orlando.

Gertrude went on to explain the details, and I quietly followed along. But as her story materialized, this feeble, elderly woman became more and more of an anomaly. Her trip to Costa Rica was a month long girls’ trip. And on that girl’s trip, she had kindled a romance with a Costa Rican local. A man named Ricardo.

It was sweet, really. Her face lit up talking about Ricardo. How they met, and how their relationship blossomed. She gushed in the way a teen would at a sleepover with friends. As if she had spent the whole day waiting, wishing to tell someone. And I was happy to be that someone. That being said, nothing prepared me for what she said next.

“Every day, we would go at it. He really knew how to make me feel good.”

I tried to hide my shock. Gertrude was giddy. Giggling and gushing like one of my college friends during a Sunday morning debrief. She leaned towards me to say the next part, a mischievous grin on her face. I was starting to sweat.

“We didn’t even bother closing the door. We were like animals.”

As she continued to talk about her and Ricardo’s impassioned lovemaking, I couldn’t help but feel jipped. Here we were, two, single college girls coming back from spring break in Key West. Yet the only person who had gotten laid in the past week was the seventy year old from Connecticut. Gertrude grabbed my arm, starry eyed from recounting her nights with Ricardo in the Costa Rican heat.

“Let me tell you, Ricardo is a real man.”

While I can’t remember every detail of the conversation we had, that line never left me. Something about the way she said “real” was pornographic. I looked back at Lucy. Her head was rolled back against her neck pillow. She was soundly asleep, drool collecting at the corner of her mouth. Maybe I was hallucinating.

But Gertrude kept speaking, and I kept listening. To her story’s ups. Downs. And the many, many positions. One hour and several graphic anecdotes later, the main points of Gertrude’s story were laid bare before me. She went to Costa Rica expecting a girls’ trip. Instead, she fell in love. And now, Gertrude was coming back to Connecticut. But not for long. She was going to sell her house, move, and spend the rest of her years in Costa Rica with Ricardo.

No, I’m not bullshitting you. Much to the chagrin of her immediate family, Gertrude was set on leaving American suburbia behind for the promise of lusty adventure. I tried to think how I would feel if my own grandma left the country to bone her remaining years away in a tropical oasis. I’d definitely miss her, but I’d also like to think I’d be happy for her. Honestly, Gertrude was the most excited I’d seen an older person in a while. Who was anybody to try and prevent her from pursuing that feeling? And, besides utter shock, I think the biggest emotion I felt talking to Gertrude on that plane was actually hope. Hope for her newfound love to work out. And hope for what it means to grow older.

I think I, and we as people, consider the density of important moments across our lifespans to look much like a bell curve. A slope that is at its fullest right in the middle. Those years where you’re old enough to have agency but young enough to experience possibility. And that before and after those years, life is simpler, smaller. That’s why kids rush growing up and why the old lament over their youth. Because the good stuff—love, marriage, careers, traveling—it’s all in the middle.

But talking to Gertrude posed a different theory. That maybe instead of your defining moments following a bell curve, it’s really more of a scatter plot. That our lifespans are marked at random by dots of pain, pleasure, and excitement, and our stories are the lines-of-best-fit between them. Sure, that kind of unpredictability is a bit terrifying, but it’s also hopeful. The thought that you could be seventy years into your life and an earth-shattering, make-love-like-animals-with-the-door-open type of love still awaits you. Or at least, the thought that taking advantage of life’s opportunities has far less to do with age and more to do with having the courage to actually reach out and take them. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m choosing to believe the Gertrude theory. And if life calls upon me in my golden years to sell my shit and leave the country, I’ll be sure to pack some snacks for the plane.

Off-Brand Steve Jobs on Unconditional Love

I was apprehensive of Steve at first. In terms of getting into my good graces, he was starting at a disadvantage. Put simply—he was a man. As I’ve already told you, flying brings out the worst in me. I’m not only a nervous passenger, I’m a judgemental one. I am constantly on the lookout for threats, assuming the worst in every other passenger. The man that smiled as I sat down? A pervert. The person who got up even when the seatbelt sign was on? A rogue with a devious plan. The traveler with the default iphone background? A sociopath with nothing precious to lose—no spouse, no kids, not even a cute dog. And Steve? He had the most peculiar red flag I’ve ever seen. His plane snack was a peeled avocado that he bit into like an apple.

Besides Steve’s astounding snack choices, he seemed like a pretty low-key passenger. And I call him Steve because he looked a lot like Steve Jobs, sans the black turtleneck. Kind’ve a nerdy looking dude. Middle aged, mostly bald, and wearing New Balance sneakers. Steve gave me a polite smile when I sat down beside him. He was by the window. I was in the aisle. And, within fifteen minutes or so, our plane had begun to take off.

The takeoff was wobbly. Perhaps an older jet, our plane surged against the wind. My nervous mannerisms kicked in. I frequently leaned over past Steve to watch the window. My leg bounced. Nothing—not even sweet, sweet Circles—could quell my worries. Steve glanced over at me and tapped his ears, signaling for me to take off my headphones. Admittedly, I was annoyed. Couldn’t he see I was busy preparing for our inevitable nosedive into the Earth? Still, I took off my headphones.

He spoke gently. “A takeoff like this is really normal in this type of jet. It’s okay.” 

My cheeks went red. Here I was judging this man. Thinking he was some apple-avocado-eating-predator. And here he was, extending comfort to me. For the rest of the three hour flight, Steve and I talked.

Steve was an interesting man. And while he physically resembled the late tech billionaire, his disposition seemed to fall somewhere between a sage hippie and a gentle parent. Steve volunteered most of his time to a group that partnered with the University of Florida, providing vegan meals to kids on campus. He lived on a farm with his wife, who he had been married to for 27 years. But the most shocking thing about Steve’s backstory was that he had eight daughters, and seven of them had died.

I never asked how his daughters died. At the time, I worried it was too invasive. Or maybe that we would both become too sad after he told me. I wonder if he wanted me to ask about how they died. Or at least, about what they were like when they were living. Instead, I asked if he was religious.

“Oh, yes. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. That pain would have killed me.” He told me that his faith didn’t strictly align with any book, but that it resembled something similar to Judaism. Steve asked me what I thought happened after we died.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I said. “I don’t really think I believe in Heaven or Hell. I think that’s a little too definitive. And people aren’t so clear cut. But I’d like to think we get to see our loved ones again.”

He smiled then. It was bittersweet.

Steve and I spoke a long time ago. I don’t remember everything about our conversation, or how we got to talking about the things we did, but somewhere along the way Steve and I began to talk about what it means to love unconditionally. Steve spoke with certainty, like a teacher passing wisdom along to his student.

“True unconditional love is to love without wanting anything in return. Loving without the expectation of reciprocity.”

My brows furrowed. “But what if the person you love never gives anything in return? At some point, you have to respect yourself and walk away.”

When I spoke to Steve, I talked a big game. Little did I know that I was a few months away from the defining heartbreak of my college experience. I gave my love freely to a boy. A boy who may have liked me a little, but certainly not enough. And eventually—albeit after far too long—I respected myself enough to stop giving.

As I’ve gotten older, I would say my love has become more transactional. A bartering system. Measured by an exchange of efforts rather than the abundance of feeling. You break up with the partner that never plans dates. You stop texting the friend who never asks how you’re doing. And I think, to a degree, that’s a good thing. You know, “invest in people who invest in you” and all that. Inner peace is a hot commodity in your adult years. You have to guard your heart a little more. You can’t deal with fuckboys, fake friends, and a 9-5. No way. You need a system you can count on to judge your relationships. Something quantifiable. And while we quantify our love as adults for good reason, I’m not sure if something that’s quantifiable can truly be unconditional.

When I think back to the times I loved most purely, most wholly, I do think there was something infinite about them. Not in a John Green YA novel kind of way. Or the humiliating yet inevitable experience of making far too many excuses for the wrong person kind of way. More like the way that freely giving your love only seems to beget more love. It feels like a resource that will never run out. And instead of your love being this scarcity that must be earned and slaved over and sought after, it’s more like dandelion seeds. Giving way to something as insignificant as the hint of a breeze or the huff of a child. And yet, without fail, those seeds yield an endless sea of yellow summer after summer.

I think heartbreaks teach us to clutch our love more closely, but I think the trick is actually learning to let it go. To let go of the idea that love is only worthwhile when it’s perfectly symmetrical, perfectly permanent, perfectly perfect. But also to let go of people. To understand that loving freely does not mean loving forever. And to understand that we often break our own hearts in our unwillingness to let love go.

When we landed, Steve and I said our goodbyes and left the plane without another word. I still think about my conversation with Steve often. I wish I could remember it more clearly. Months after that flight, I tried looking him up on his program’s website to send him a letter. To tell him what our conversation meant and still means to me. To thank him for the comfort he extended to a scared stranger. But I never could find his contact information to thank him. In some ways, I find it fitting. What Steve gave me was a dandelion seed. Freely given. Its beauty born not from what is returned.

But taken.