The only other person on the plane wearing a hat today is a middle-aged, extremely overweight, cheerful woman. She is wearing a lime green dress with no embellishments or shape. Her hat is made of pale- colored straw and has a white daisy in the front. I think I had an outfit exactly like this when I was six. Her cheeks are red and she’s smiling the brightest smile…
…as she argues with the airline attendant about which seat she is allowed to take.
“Ma’am you have to sit in the seat assigned to you on your boarding pass!”
The woman, let’s call her Daisy, merely laughs and says, “no, I think I’ll sit here,” still smiling.
“Ma’am! Your seat is in that row!”
“No… I think it’s right here…” she continues, chuckling every now and then.
Where is her self-assigned seat? Where, oh fate, oh karma, oh great wheel of life, is the seat she wanted so extremely badly?
If you said “Grishma! It’s got to be your seat!” You’re wrong, but close. She wanted to sit in 25C, and my seat is 25A. No one sat between us.
I am so sleepy at this time that, as soon as I get into close proximity with my seat—when my butt enters the seat’s electron cloud, if you will—my eyes start glazing over and everything becomes blurry. The last thing I remember seeing is Daisy smiling and waving at me from her seat.
4 hours later, Daisy nudges me and says, “we’re going down…” I assume now that she meant the plane is landing, but at my time of sleep-induced delirium, “we’re going down” could only mean one thing.
“Basement,” I mumble, “fri—yawn—day the thirteenth”
My head is still leaning forward against the seat in front of me. My neck is incredibly sore.
“and guess who’s play—yawn—ing Jason.” I continue to mumble to myself, and as I finish up the verse (I can’t stop. I just can’t stop part way. It feels sacrilegious), I realize then what I was doing, pause, and turn my head to look at Daisy. She’s still smiling at me as if I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.
“S-Sorry…” I mutter, leaning back into the seat and stretching my neck.
“Oh no, it’s great! I loved that third one you were mumbling!” she says, still turned towards me.
“What?”
“Yeah, you’ve been mumbling songs for the past 4 hours.”
A wave of consciousness hits me instantly and I become wide awake. According to Daisy, I was sleep-singing-along to songs playing on my ipod as I tried to sleep. I was too tired to realize what I was doing, but too uncomfortable in my seat to legitimately fall asleep. She only woke me up because I’d have to turn off my ipod for the landing. Mortified, I turn off my ipod and put it in my bag. I attempt to laugh it off as the plane begins its descent.
After landing, I go through the potential culprits—everything from Gaga to Weezy had played in the 63-song symphony I quietly mumbled to those around me. Even a song from Arsonists Get All the Girls had played. I wonder what that sounded like.
No comments:
Post a Comment