Finding Humanity in the Middle Seat
A note for anyone who is tired of other people and wishes they could see the world a little differently
I’m stuck in the middle seat on a flight that was supposed to go from LA to Atlanta, but it went to Chattanooga instead. I’ve been in this seat (minus 2 pee breaks) for about 7 hours, and I can’t bear to read my book or watch any more back-of-the-headrest movies.
A freak storm blew up and shut down the Atlanta airport before we could land. To avoid running out of gas and falling out of the sky while we waited for the weather to change, we took a detour. Now, we have been sitting on the runway in Chattanooga for well over an hour.
The woman in the row in front of me has gone full business mode. She is banging out emails on her laptop, shooting texts from her cell phone, and having VERY DIRECT conversations on her headset. I’d like to tell you that she was some kind of mogul, and I got to hear some real dirt where people got fired and millions of dollars got made (or lost), but alas, that was not the case. It seems instead that there is a 4” hole in the drywall of a strip mall property she is a realtor for, and no one will tell her why the hole is there.
That’s right – one hour’s worth of emails, texts, and VERY DIRECT phone calls were all in the service of this woman finding out what a hole in a wall was for. (I’m saying VERY DIRECT because she is not mincing words about her unhappiness and… SHE IS VERY LOUD.) Apparently, the hole was intentionally placed by the building contractor, but the function was never communicated to him. The drywall guy says that the electrician wanted the hole, the electrician says the plumber asked for it, and the plumber says it was demanded by the IT person (who says it was the drywall guy’s thing).
After about 45 minutes of this drama unfolding in a way that was impossible for anyone nearby to ignore, the young man next to me on the right began sucking air through his teeth and violently punching the empty space behind this woman’s seat. It seems being forced to attend numerous 1-on-1s regarding the 4” hole and being pinned against a window for 7 hours (with NO pee breaks! This guy is a camel!) was taking a toll on this traveler. In the interest of self-preservation, I made intense eye contact with this very blog that you’re reading now and refused to look away until his shadow boxing session came to an end.
To the other side of me, a group of young men were reaching a state of panic. They were all less than 20 years old and in the employment of the United States Army. Apparently, if they did not arrive at their appointed destination very soon, they would be considered AWOL. This was causing so much stress that one of the men went to the front of the plane to attempt to convince the pilot that we needed to immediately leave Chattanooga, regardless of the instructions from the Atlanta airport. I was surprised that the army would not accept being diverted on a commercial flight as a valid reason to be tardy, but the soldiers assured me this was a very real problem. (I started talking to the soldiers when the young man to my right began shaking his fists above his head).
In moments like this, it’s hard not to let our primal instincts take the wheel. The heat, the stress, the frustration, and the sorrow on the plane were all palpable. There was no word of when we would be able to take off, and the captain had assured us he really did not want us to get off the plane because it would take forever to get us back on. In moments like this, I lean heavily on a coping strategy I learned back in high school: I flee to the solitude of the restroom. [This would be my second pee break of the trip for those keeping track.]
At the back of the plane, I quickly got hemmed in between the serving area where the flight attendants make coffee and the locked lavatory doors. Other travelers, seeing that a line was beginning to form, cast aside their desire to keep the isles clear of bodies and surged toward the back of the plane to secure their place in what was sure to be a long line. I am confident this behavior was less about people needing to use the facilities and more about primal instincts driving people to snatch whatever control they could in the situation. Taking action, getting a place in line, and preventing others from cutting in made them feel they had at least a tiny grain of power.
In this weirdly competitive line environment, as the temperature rose, I found myself standing next to a woman holding a baby. He was wrapped in a blue blanket and a onesie that had tow trucks on it. I didn’t speak to her but as we stood, she turned so her little one passed into the space between us. In this moment, he seemed to almost intentionally stick his foot out of his blanket and rest it on my crossed arms.
The foot laid ever so delicately on top of my forearm, and it was only there for a moment. But in that moment, it was magical.
Have you touched a baby’s foot recently? Baby feet are perfect. I’m not even a big fan of babies, but baby feet… They are as soft and smooth as kitten fur, with that fresh-out-of-the-oven human smell that only babies have. A baby’s foot doesn’t stink. It doesn’t have a single callous because it is completely unscarred by this earth or by the weight that will soon be upon it. The toes are perfect because they’ve never been constrained by the footwear required to be safe on concrete. The rest of the foot is as soft as the most luxurious little pillow because it hasn’t experienced any of the toil and strain that drive muscle growth.
The foot of a baby is also fleeting. It is only a matter of weeks before this precious child will begin experiencing the world in a way that will harden his feet and change them into something utilitarian. Very soon, this baby foot will not exist.
As I looked back down the isle of the plane and I saw the businesswoman, the man having a meltdown behind her, the soldiers chewing their fingernails over the trouble they might be in, and the line of irritable people waiting for the lavatory, I was struck by a realization. At one point, we all had baby feet.
At one time, we were all soft, beautiful, and unscarred. We were innocent to the point that you could tell it when our foot brushed against an arm. Before we knew what fear and stress and uncertainty were… we all had perfect baby feet. This is where we came from. All of us.
In that moment, I felt connected to these people. I saw that they were all responding to the world as they experienced it. They were all struggling and evolving in ways that were required of them. I know that we all share a common humanity and that we all came from the same place. Underneath the callouses that the world has rubbed onto each of us, we were once all the same. We were all completely innocent and unaltered by the world. We all had baby feet.
When I got back to my seat, I felt differently about my situation. I wasn’t excited to keep sitting on the plane, but I felt a connection to the people around me. I understood that we are all from the same place, and that we share a common journey, even if our current paths are filled with frustration and delays. And sometimes, all it takes is a tiny, perfect baby foot to remind us of that.