Day One: A Window Seat and Airplane Friends

It’s another beautiful day for business travel, but of course any day would be. The horribly replicated image of a seatbelt and the internationally recognized “No Smoking” sign are illuminated directly overhead. The sun is beating through the window and I am starting to sweat-not enough to cause distinguishable odor or stains under my arms, but enough to be uncomfortable. I am not one to be fooled by the romantic notion of a window seat. In fact, I hate them. I’ve hated them for a while now. The last time I was forced to give up my emergency exit row, aisle seat, 16C, I developed my theory. You see, there is not one thing that is universally accepted as the defining characteristic of an adult. Some say its age, but even still there is debate: 18 or 21? Some say its responsibility. You know...job, bills, house...all of the things we hate about being adults. So I decided that the only hold-fast way to tell if someone is an adult is their airplane seat preference. You see, kids love window seats; they get some sort of excitement out of watching the brownish-green colored earth pass below. An adult, on the other hand, prefers space over entertainment. If you’ve seen one take-off or landing, you’ve seen them all. So needless to say, my theory hasn’t caught on with the general public as of yet...I’m not holding my breath.

So I’m flying high over the armpit of the US, some middle-of-nowhere hell-whole in east Texas. Since I have to suffer the window seat, It would makes sense that I might as well take in some of the view, except, there is no view. So I’m stuck in the heat of the sun, sitting in a window seat with nothing to look at (someone must’ve stolen the complimentary airliner magazine). With all resources exhausted, I turn to my neighbor, 26B, and engage in some sort of meaningless conversation that neither he nor I really want have, and yet, we do. Airplane friends are such a phenomenon. We have next to nothing in common but we have been destined to spend the next few hours with each other. Our conversation goes something like this, “Hello 26B, I’m 26A. Where are you headed?”

“Oh, to some nowhere place that has to do with my nothing job”, 26B replies with a sort of imitation interest.

“Me too!” With these words, I’ve just offered our first commonality. Maybe our connection will be deeper than the routine, surface-level interactions that we engage in everyday. Maybe not.

“So what do you do?” 26B asks, attempting to keep the momentum going. I cringe when I hear these words. “What do you do?” as if explaining my job to someone will actually help them understand me as a person. Once before, when I was talking to another airplane friend, I asked them the question, “Who are you?” rather than “What do you do?”, and he couldn’t answer without talking about his job. I would like to know when what we do from nine to five starting dictating who we are as a person.

Who am I? That’s an easy question. I’m 26A, a baby-boomer and marketing executive. I’ve bought into the commercialism and materialism of our culture. I have 7 pairs of designer jeans, 4 pairs of khakis, 5 million polo shirts, 2 kids, and a dog...minus the kids. I am the quintessence of ideal. I live in an ideal city in an ideal apartment where I watch my ideal plasma screen while sitting in ideal IKEA furniture. I work at an ideal company doing ideal things...and I hate it. I’ve lost all sense of individuality and have become a carbon copy of the man who works in the cubicle next to me.

My conversation with 26B is unfortunately not turning into a deep, meaningful connection. These conversations rarely do. I am listening and speaking, yet my mind is somewhere else. Suddenly it hits me; 26B and I really are the same. We’re all the same. We’re a generation of pansies. We hide behind brand names and computer screens. We are afraid of being who we really are. We share the same meaningless existence and I can’t help but think, “There’s got to be more”.

The tires of the Boeing 737 screech as they hit the pavement. We have arrived at our nowhere place and must now go about our nothing jobs. Or do we? I say goodbye to 26B as I enter the crowd of people in the terminal with only one thought in my head. I sure hope I don’t have to sit in a window seat on my return flight.