Making Friends on an Airplane
August 17, 2010
Several of my female friends are chatty airline passengers. One friend in the advertising industry has even developed a couple of long-term relationships with a random seatmate. I generally don’t talk to any one. I’m sure I have negative body language and I’m always carting around a book and newspapers as hideaway devices.
Last week’s flight from Stockholm to Chicago was different. I jostled down the aisle and saw my seatmate all hopped up about having a window view. He had one of those wallet sized plastic ID-ticket holders around his neck, a sure sign of a professional traveler.
He was 12 years old.
His name was Erik and he was on his way home to San Diego, Ca. after a six-week visit with his grandfather in Estonia. Erik was traveling alone.
Space does not permit me to share everything I learned about Erik on the eight hour flight. I know he has flown 32 times over the Atlantic Ocean. This does not count one round trip between San Diego and Philadelphia, three round trips between San Diego and Seattle, four round trips between San Diego and Cambodia and four round trips between San Diego and Tahiti.
This was like sitting next to Jimmy Buffett.
Erik is a part-time pilot. He’s already flown a prop plane three times. When I was 12 years old I couldn’t even build a model airplane.
He analyzed our flight patterns and kept meticulous time on a honkin’ watch the size of Mars. “There’s more smoothness on a Boeing 747,” Erik explained from under a mop-top haircut. “The wingspan is much less wider than an Airbus.” He refused to sleep.
He knew he wanted to be a pilot at the age of 3. Erik said his father was an architectural photographer and his 46-year-old mother wants to parachute out of an airplane. He asked me to play blackjack and after about 20 rounds I got the feeling he was trying to hoodwink me. I mean, he was dealing cards face up. “Never trust an unattended minor,” he said with a sly smile. We weren’t playing for money although I told the flight attendants we were. The plane was full so they couldn’t move me. Or him.
Erik remarked how Asiana Airlines has the capability for interactive blackjack and poker with other passengers, something our flight did not have. He showed me some magic card tricks which we shared with Swedish women across the aisle. I had more passenger interaction on this flight than on my last five years of flying.
My new pal was bummed out about returning to school because he was starting at a new school. I told him that when I was his age I was uprooted when my parents moved from Columbus, Ohio to Naperville, Ill. It was tough. He is not alone.
Erik drifted in and out of the movie “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” three and a half times during the flight and let me listen to The Red Hot Chili Peppers on his iPod. Then he asked, “Do you know Beck?” I said I loved Beck’s sense of challenge and shifting musical motifs. I think Erik was impressed. I also elected not to talk about how Beck’s “Lost Cause” has been in my recent rotation. He’ll have plenty of time to learn about that stuff on his own.
I’m not mentioning the airline we were on because Erik gave them low marks on the landing at O’Hare. It was something about how the wing flaps were still up when the plane came to a stop, which meant the pilot would have to start up the plane and put it in reverse before the next departure. Or something like that. I was tired and I wasn’t taking notes.
But Erik is a great kid. We agreed on how screaming, screeching babies are the worst thing about flying. Worse than turbulence. He carried an “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” paperback and that scored huge points with me. As I disembarked I told Erik his parents should be very proud of him, which I’m sure they are. If I ever have children, I too, will tell them to reach for the stars.
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