~:: Tales of Santa Fe: Pt. 1 ::~

Getting there:

(I have no pictures of this)

We fly Southwest.  We like ‘em.  Like their attitude (which yesterday, as we shivered in the Giant Storm That Ate The Middle of America, offered us a no-questions-asked opportunity to reschedule our flight at no extra cost), and the fact that we can check bags without paying for the privilege (just the way life used to be before up-selling) and the colors they use on their wing tips.  You check in on line, you get there and line up in the order of your check in, then you grab the seats you want.  Wonderful.

I have a strategy for seat grabbing.  My brother’s strategy, once when he was a huge mountain of a man, was to find a row, sit in the middle seat—being sure to allow himself to spread menacingly—and then glare at every person who came down the aisle looking for a seat.  Who wants to share a row with a guy who not only looks hostile, but only leaves half a seat on either side of himself?  Privacy.  He got privacy.

Not that I don’t like meeting people.  Just, when I fly, I want – nothing.  No talk.  No drama.  Just me and my book and maybe a snooze.  You know by now that I am perfectly capable of holding my seat mate’s airsick bag when I have to.  I just don’t wanna have to.

So when I travel with Guy, I always give him the window seat (he gets great pleasure from looking down on the earth) and then I pile our stuff in the middle seat, while I sort of kneel in the aisle seat, gazing back down towards the airplane door, as if I’m waiting for somebody who should be coming.  And it almost always works.  People don’t even ask if that aisle seat is taken.  We get our own two slightly too small seats plus one for our coats and stuff.  YAY!!!

But when the plane is going to be full, then you have to decide: do you want a stranger between you, or do I want to sit crammed in the middle seat, fighting for an arm rest and suffering too much proximity with somebody who might even be scary looking?  (You  may have guessed by now that we are not First Class people.)

Even when they announce that the plane is full, I find myself piling all our stuff in the aisle seat and not making eye contact, hoping that somehow there will be one seat etra, and that it will end up being the one next to me.

But on that flight, as the places around us began filling up, it finally, suddenly struck me: the harder you make it for somebody to claim that seat next to you, the better the chance you’ll end up sitting next to a really, really pushy dang person.

Three seconds after I’d had that thought, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of this gigantic shape—a big Tongan guy who’d been heading hesitantly down the aisle and had just passed our row.  He had now stopped dead, and was peering sadly all around.   I guess there just weren’t any seats left back there.  Then he backed up—not easily done in that tiny row with all those other people behind him.  And I heard the dreaded question: “Is anybody sitting here?”

It wouldn’t have done any good to lie: “Ummm – oh, yes.  My – uh – aged aunt.  She’s back there in the restroom.  She’s probably trying to get back to us right now.  Probably.  But she won’t be able to get through.  Because you guys are all standing here, filling up the aisle.”  Because – well, first of all it would have been lying, which is not only unethical, but also bad karma.  And because – pfff – it just wasn’t true.

So he backs up even further (causing a shift in the balance of the plane) and begins to back in, wedging himself into our row.  (momentary tense shift)

This guy was huge.  He was really too tall for the plane.  And he was really, really big around.  Professional line-backer big.  When he came down into the seat, he got hung up on the arm rests.  Honestly, he did.  “Ooof,” he said.  “I guess I’m a little big for this seat.”  Like six inches too big on either side.  The armrest had totally disappeared.  But he had a sweet voice, and there is always a point when I finally just have to give in to the inevitable.

“A sec,” I said, and giving up any hope of having an armrest to myself, shoved the one between us up and out of the way.  Thereby giving up at least half of my paid for seat and all of my privacy.  I had never had a Tongan man in my lap before.

It was only an hour and twenty minute flight.  (This is because it was non-stop.  Most of the flights between here and Santa Fe take anywhere from four to six and a half hours.  They like to add in little side trips to San Diego or Chicago or Seattle in the middle.)

And he was the nicest man.  We chatted a little bit.  He was on his way to a wedding in Orlando.  Part of a very big family.  He had hoped he wouldn’t have to go, but they wanted him to stand in the line. And he told me that the name he had tattooed on his forearm (in three inch tall black letters) was his grandfather’s name.  He was sorry he’d chosen to put it there; too many people had too many wry things to say about it, and every one of them hurt him; he had put the name there to honor his grandfather, because he loved him.

How could you mind being squeezed in next to a guy like that?

Finally, he fell asleep.  And snored.  But not too loud.  I had to kind of lean out and look way up even to see his face.

So I ate the sandwiches Guy had made to bring with us and worked on a hard sudoku puzzle, letting the plane lull me into that nice place between reality and peace.

And that’s the way I flew to Santa Fe.

End of Part One.