There are two letters of the alphabet that every business traveler hates to hear. The first is B and the other E. If you fly much, you know what I mean.
Being assigned a B or an E means you’re smack dab in the middle seat and that every conceivable effort at begging, pleading and bribing of the counter agent has failed to land you anywhere else. All efforts futile, 18B is precisely where I recently found myself on the first leg of a flight home from LA.
When I arrived at my seat, the man in 18A already had his nose in a newspaper…a very good sign. I felt bad, though, to make the woman in 18C move into the aisle so that I could be seated. The process wasn’t easy for her and she relied heavily on her cane to move out of the way for me.
As the woman shuffled back to her seat I apologized for causing the bother for her. “That’s okay,” she replied. “I just don’t move around like I used to.” I smiled and moved my magazine into reading position. But she wasn’t done.
“I bet you would never have guessed that I am 80 years old,” she said. “People tell me I don’t look that old. Do you think I look 80?”
“Eighty? Really? You don’t look eighty.” What was I supposed to say? And truthfully, she really didn’t look a day over seventy-nine.
By the time we left LA airspace, I knew her name, the city she lived in and the exact date she had moved from just outside Indianapolis to Los Angeles – 5/5 of 55. By the time we were over Palm Springs I knew about the lot she had bought, her trailer house, the eight-foot privacy fence, about the dog of the neighbor in the rented trailer house two homes down that would sit and stay until told to fetch when its owner tossed a ball to the end of the street, that another trailer that had been lived in by a now deceased friend who once played a piano recital in Carnegie Hall was now lived in by a family that deals drugs and that the lady in 18C was the proud driver of a mint condition 1982 pure white Camero with rear window louvers and a rear spoiler (and, of course, how she came to buy the vehicle for only $3,000). And I still hadn’t asked a single question.
By the time we were in Arizona air space I learned how Betty had been transferred by a defense contractor employer from LA to Mesa and how she had cut the stencil and silk screened the numbers on the side of one of the first rockets to carry an astronaut into space (which I must admit I found to be pretty cool). And as we approached Phoenix I was even so fortunate to see a box with locks of hair in it that were cut from her grandfather’s head in the mid 1800’s before he went totally bald. The locks were given to her by her sister whose rent she helps pay each month. And I still hadn’t asked a single question.
But I had answered a few. Betty had discovered I was flying to Kansas City. That I had two unruly beagle pups. That I had two daughters. Two sisters. And that my parents were living and retired in East Texas. And that our family tries to meet every other year or so for a mini vacation.
After we landed, the most amazing thing happened. Betty asked if she could bless me. “Sure,” I stammered. “I want to bless your trip home to Kansas City,” she continued. “And your girls and your training of your pups. And I want to bless your family and your next trip together. And I want to bless you.”
I can’t say that I’ve ever been blessed by someone on an airplane before. Cursed, I suspect, but not blessed. She left me speechless (which is no small task).
“Thank you,” I stammered. I didn’t really know how one is supposed to respond to a blessing like that.
As we taxied to the gate, Betty turned her attention to the girl across the aisle. I put my magazine back in my case and sat in silence. Showered in blessings, smiling inside and inspired to read less and bless more.
I’ll never forget my flight in 18B. Thanks Betty for taking time to lift me up.
“May you bless me?”
“You bet! Anytime.”