People Need People

All my stories have been on planes lately. But I have been on a lot of planes, so I’m not going to apologize about it. This Tuesday, I was on two planes. It was an unplanned round trip Tuesday (LGA – ORD, ORD-LGA). I landed at gate H16 in Terminal 3 and flew out of gate H18. It’s the farthest end of the terminal, and a great way to get in my steps for the day.

Both planes were “light loads.” I think that is a term in the logistics industry I am now in, but in aviation, it means there will be more empty seats than butts in seats.

My row on the way back to New York happened to be the only row, excluding first class, with three butts in three seats.

And I think it was the most enjoyable row because there were those three butts, three brains, and three bodies all figuring it out together.

It started with some quick conversation. I don’t know if the two guys were brothers or friends, but there were in their early to mid 20s.

“Man, I don’t know how long this flight is. I wonder how long it is?”

“It’s 5 hours I think.”

“5 hours? Alright, 5 hours.”

I interject because it’s been a long day: “Funny enough, I was on the flight out here this morning and we hit 200 mile an hour headwinds so we should get that tailwind on the way back and fly there. Hour and a half max.”

The window seat cut in and was dead set on his timeline: “It’s going to be five hours” he said to his friend with a friendly chuckle.

We all laughed a little and we were off and running. The middle seat dropped his phone and I guess my arms were longer than his so I used them to pick it up. Good pre-departure activity.

We both used the bathroom a few times (more excuse for steps), so the camaraderie was developing.

When snacks were delivered, I didn’t want mine, but when I rejected the offering late (i.e., the pretzels and Biscoffs were in my hand), the flight attendant objected:

“You’ve touched them, so I can’t take them back. I would just throw them away.”

I wasn’t in a mood to do or say anything but my good friend in the middle seat solved the problem: “I’ll take them.”

“Here you go, love it,” I followed as I handed off the two items.

On my last bathroom trip, I got back to my seat and it was covered in ice and pretzels. Middle seat friend was on his way to find paper towels and doing a Grade A cleaning job on the seat.

The flight attendant had almost encouraged me to move to a different seat in the middle of the flight (“there are seats open”) but I didn’t want to. If there was a time to move to the vacant aisle across the aisle, it was then. When several ice cubes, pooled water, and crushed pretzels were all over my seat cushion.

But I kept standing and chilling and waiting (sitting is bad for you anyway), as the clean up continued in row 13. He apologized politely, and I smiled and laughed, exclaiming “No worries, I now have the cleanest seat on the plane. Thanks man.”

There was such a powerful line in a recent article I read titled “The Anti-Social Century.” It stated:

“The middle ring is key to social cohesion, Dunkelman said. Families teach us love, and tribes teach us loyalty. The village teaches us tolerance.”

This is what we were. We were the strangers in society. The little village in row 13. We were bonding. Without that bonding, we are in trouble. Big trouble.

We need each other far more than you realize. Not our friends or spouses or children or parents. Each other.