Suspended in a State of Waiting [jessi]

We are all suspended in a state of waiting, and it’s hard not to notice the people around me:

Two teenagers on their way to a rodeo. I had no idea you could buy a cowboy-hat shaped box for your cowboy hats. An elderly couple sits closest to the gate. He blows his nose and clears his throat intermittently—his wife ignores him, focusing her attentions on her Sudoku book. A group of men and women are on their way to an orthodontists’ convention. They call out to each other as they board separately, “don’t forget to floss!” and “you wear your retainer, now.”

It’s funny what a common destination will do to bring people together, and that’s one of the things I love about traveling. I’m not very chatty on a cross country flight (mostly because the monotonous hum of the jet engine quickly puts me to sleep), but even so, I am fascinated by the people I meet that are so outside of my normal sphere. It’s enchanting and addicting.

On a Philadelphia to Seattle flight two years ago, a friend and I spent the whole five-and-a-half hours passing notes back and forth about the man in front of us. He was a Bulgarian national dressed in leather, with a futuristic looking wristwatch that clearly had room for either a cyanide pill or a computer chip containing top-secret information (but not both). He waggled his eyebrows menacingly at the flight attendants, and growled when they did not bring his food quickly enough. We had just drawn the conclusion that he was a Jason Bourne-style villain (most likely an International hit man), when the in-flight movie began. It turns out International hit men are surprisingly fond of cartoon squirrels and Amy Adams. I’ve sat through Enchanted while on a plane a grand total of four times, and I’ve never experienced a fellow passenger laughing as heartily (albeit gruffly, and with growly overtones) as my Bulgarian hit man

A few weeks ago I was killing time in the Anacortes ferry terminal, waiting to walk on to the 12:30 ferry to Orcas Island, and I struck up conversation with a furniture builder who began by telling me that he took a weekend trip and ended up staying away for two months. When someone dangles a conversational tidbit like that, you end up following it, and sometimes you cover every subject from teenage daughters, broken dreams and questioning your faith, but later you can’t recall the original answer to the original question.

Sometimes it isn’t a shared conversation. Sometimes it’s standing back and catching someone’s eye and knowing you’re both thinking the same thing.

I sat in front of a college student once who spent the whole flight earnestly trying to impress the attractive German girl sharing his row. His opening line was, “I have a man-crush on Socrates.” I thought this was kind of a cute way to begin, but three hours he was going full tilt with his philosophy of man, and the ultimate religion he was very close to cobbling together that would answer all of life’s questions (since, he confidently shared, no single religion in existence had the ability to do so). His distracted and entirely self involved discourse continued unabated for the rest of the flight, and even after we had disembarked and were walking en masse toward Baggage Claim. My sister shushed me, but two other people smirked when I stage-whispered, “Five hours! He’s been talking for five hours!”

When I used to visit my sister in San Francisco, one of our favorite things was to find The Bushman and watch him scare the living daylights out of people. Once we stood middle of a crowd of people for about 20 minutes, many with their video cameras rolling, watching this guy. People who normally wouldn’t look each other in the eye while walking down the street completely let down their guard. Laughing, nodding to each other, and finding commonality at the expense of the overweight tattooed dude who screams like a little girl.

I don’t want to make these experiences out to be more than they are. I know that to suggest such a tiny connection equals actual community is silly. But I know that sometimes these connections open my eyes to people and things around me. They soften me and bring me outside my shell.

Anyone else have these kinds of moments?