Once upon a time, I wore coordinating pant suits with crisp white shirts and sensible low-heeled shoes and flew all over the country meeting with clients and earning extraordinary amounts of frequent flier miles. During this time, I suffered through many hours of sitting next to complete wackadoodles who wanted nothing more than to talk my ear off during the entirety of the flight, while I wanted nothing more than to sleep or drink or read trashy magazines.
I encountered the pinnacle of crazy on a business trip that included a flight from Birmingham, Alabama, to Denver, Colorado. The plane leaving Birmingham held a maximum of 40 people and was jammed to the rafters with crying babies and cranky business people (i.e. me).
I was hopeful that the window seat next to me would stay open, and just when I was about to assume the nap position, a final passenger burst onto the plane. He was talking to himself loudly (never a good sign) and wore a khaki Hawaiian print shirt (an even worse sign). He also wore a large straw fedora and had a huge backpack with him along with his carry-on. It took two flight attendants and a passenger to get it all shoved into the already-full overhead bin.
He came down the aisle slowly and stopped to talk to other passengers, who sort of looked like they knew him and sort of looked like they were humoring a crazy man. I got out of my seat to let him slip in and he slowly and not-so-gracefully got into his seat by banging his heavy backpack into my knees.
I waved him off when he apologized but secretly made plans to call the INS or the FDA or the DEA as soon as we landed in Denver. I could see the headlines on the CNN ticker now: “Attractive Businesswoman Busts Crazy Hippie in Daring Pursuit of Freedom and Peace for USA!” I only wished my hair hadn’t gotten so flat and sweaty during my time in Birmingham because it admittedly put the “attractive” part of the headline in jeopardy. I would settle for “striking,” “lovely” or even “comely” but I knew I could only push it so far and may have to settle for “sweaty,” “distraught,” or “Canadian.”
As soon as he was settled into his seat, I began implementing my Avoidance Maneuvers (headphones in ears, book open to chapter 5, and a frowny or sleepy expression) so he knew I was not the type of person to talk to people on planes.
Unfortunately he seemed to have built up an immunity to my Avoidance Maneuvers and started asking me if I had ever read Jack Kerouac. I told him I had never read Jack Kerouac but he was unconvinced. He began naming different Jack Kerouac books to see if any of them rang a bell. Still, the answer was no.
He gave up on me for the time being and got on his cell phone to tell some of his friends in Denver that he was coming to visit. Even though he was quite loudly talking on his phone, the flight attendants chose to ignore him and instead looked out the window and watched us taxi down the runway. After five more minutes of conversation, one of the flight attendants finally gave up, sighed, came over, and told him to shut it off.
While I physically saw him close his cell phone and put it in his pocket, I could still hear voices. Maybe it was just my inner monologue screaming for help, but I suspected the sounds were coming from my seatmate’s pants. I pondered how to carefully ask him if he could hear sounds coming from his pants but I wasn’t quite sure how he would respond and if it was a can of worms I was psychologically prepared to open.
I suddenly had visions of this crazy beatnik and his stupid cell phone causing some sort of interference between the communications system of the plane and the airport tower which would result in a fiery crash of some sort within the next 30 seconds. I turned to him and asked the safest type of question I could come up with amid my panic: “Do you hear a radio or something coming from your, uh, backpack?”
He reacted with a start and began unloading the contents of his backpack onto my lap. Then he started laughing and reached into his pocket. As I flinched and wondered if I could still get off the plane, he pulled out a small device and declared that this was the cause of the unidentified noise.
He told me it was a tape recorder which he used to tape his voicemail messages (only the “good” ones, he assured me, which I’m going to guess does not include the ones from his parole officer or disgruntled boss) and play them back to himself and/or others. He then proceeded to play a few for me, which ran along the lines of, “Hey, Harry [muffled noises and yelling at others to ‘pipe down’], I heard you were coming to the Million Hippie Man March! Man, that is awesome! [More muffled noises and sound of coins dropping into payphone] Can’t wait to see you man!”
I wanted to tell him very badly that he no longer needed to tape record his tape-recorded messages and could actually just save them to his voicemail box and replay them at his leisure but I stopped myself. I had already scared this hippie once and I didn’t want to do it again.
Jennifer Cresap has been writing for almost 20 years, and is currently a marketing professional in the Minneapolis area. When she is not climbing the corporate ladder, she shares her adventures on her blog, The Vajenny Monologues. Jennifer lives in Fargo, ND (which is another story unto itself).