There’s Still Time to Change

I don’t know what I want in the San Francisco Airport domestic terminal at 10:30AM.  I get a Caesar salad and some humous and eat it in a booth across from the area where my flight will board.  People have lined up, but no one is moving.  Then it appears people have progressed onward and I begin to eat my salad, faster and faster.  I stand to throw away my juice bottle and realize that no one at all, is moving over at my gate.  There isn’t much of the salad left that I want any more.

Got this flight from San Francisco to New York for $187.00.  They must have found nineteen ways to remind me that this was ‘basic economy,’ in the days since then.  “There’s still time to change!”  I have enough pull that they arranged for me to sit in Economy Plus and reckoned I could put up with most things for five hours.  I took my seat and arranged my things and put in my new noise cancelling earbuds. 

She waived her hand in front of my face.  Removing the white nodules from ear, the woman asked if it would be alright if she gave me her aisle seat so she could sit next to her son in the window.  “Um, yes.  Definitely.”  She wouldn’t need to ask me again. I shifted all my things over and nodded politely to her and her son. 

He was a cute little guy.  Animated.  Little things bothered him and got scared and lost his patience easily.  He reminded me of myself.   I kept considering him from my right eye.  His disappointments were kept brief.  He really just wanted his mom’s attention.  She kept asking the flight attendant for help with the parental controls on her son’s screen.  Her screen, my old screen, didn’t work.  The flight attendant, an eager young guy with short red hair kept saying he would reboot the screen.  Another flight attendant had eerie far-away-eyes and I kept thinking about her longer than I should have. 

Thursday, 11/14/19