Dateline Boston — I met a man on an airplane. I knew he would be fun to talk to the minute he opened his mouth. There were three seats in our row—he had the aisle, and I had the middle. Our row-mate had yet to show up. The man said to me, “If you have a crayon, we can scratch out the number of the other seat and no one would ever know.” I wondered why he said “crayon” and not “pen.” Did he know I was a preschool teacher? Was my “I work with small children” vibe that strong?
I laughed at his comment, and then the third member of our row arrived. She was a young woman, maybe in her early twenties. I said to her, “Should we just all move over?” I was trying to prevent us from all getting up and shuffling around in the small crowded space. She snapped, “I want the window.” I guess I had a look on my face, because Mr. Aisle whispered to me, “Not a word, not…a…word!”
Smiling politely, I got up to give her the window. She got right to work, texting on her cell phone, and didn’t stop, even when the flight attendant made the second announcement to put cell phones away. I decided to pray for a safe flight in my head. I looked over to see what Mr. Aisle was doing.
During the entire five-hour flight, the man to my left did nothing but read newspapers. I was fascinated. Every time I glanced in his direction, he’d be reading a different one, seemingly from cover to cover. A couple of times I thought he had fallen asleep, but when I looked closer, I noticed that he was simply reading every single word on the page.
When he was done, I pounced. “Boy, you can read the heck out of a newspaper!” I exclaimed. He told me he had to; it was his job. I asked him if he was a writer. He was. Turns out he was the editor of, ahem, an online newspaper.
We started talking, and over the next two hours we discussed, debated, and laughed. I found out my new friend’s name—Noonan, no first name given. I found out he was seventy years old, Jewish, a vegetarian, and a Republican. Me? A forty-year-old agnostic meat-eating Democrat. Put these two next two each other on a plane, and watch the sparks fly! It was great.
Noonan (as he called himself) and I talked about everything under the sun. Our topics ranged from values, to writing, from family dynamics to homeschooling. Each of us was confident in our beliefs, yet we both played the Devil’s Advocate role to the hilt. Our animated conversation made the rest of the ride, uh…fly by.
The icing on the cake was that at the end of the trip, Mr. Noonan (as I call him) said that he liked my attitude and that he wanted me to write for him. The rest is, to use a cliché, history. Next time you fly, put down that book or newspaper; you never know who you’ll meet. But bring your iPod, just in case.
Ms. Vaillancourt may be contacted at snobbyblog@gmail.com
