I am on Long Island at the moment. My flight from Nashville to Kennedy airport was completely uneventful (I didn’t even get motion sick! I am one of those unfortunate people who could probably get motion sick in a soapbox cart, so this is actually kind of an achievement) except for one thing.
We were about to land and I was packing up my book and my pencil case when the woman next to me asked, “Are you an actress?”
I was surprised enough by the question that I said the first thing that came to mind, which was that no, I am a historian and I sometimes read plays for fun. She seemed disappointed. Then while we were landing she gave me an earful about how her brother-in-law is a historian at Georgia Tech. And I didn’t throw up. So, I’m going to call this one a win.
The Earworm 
I once got into an interesting conversation with an organic farmer from Arkansas by virtue of reading Chaucer on a plane.
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Last time I took Schiller on a plane (ATL-ABQ) it made people unhappy, because the cover was black and it was in a foreign language.
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Although, now I think about it, the outcome to that was okay. The guy sitting next to me asked (nervously) what language that was. When he found out it was not (I’m guessing) some romanized language of terrorists, he relaxed. Turned out he was an Engineering Professor (also at GT), so I got a demo of his 1st generation iPod, and that was pretty cool.
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Neat!
(Now I’m imagining legions of Schiller-reading terrorists with plans to blow up . . . everything contrary to Nature?)
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We will stop at nothing to have frank discussions with the Power.
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Good grief! What would people like that do if the cabin crew made the flight announcements in a foreign language? At least they would be spared the rather thin humour of hearing completely different information in English and French which is routine on Air Canada.
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Curiously, some of the freaked out were the cabin crew. Or at least their happy welcome smiles disappeared really quick, as soon as they saw the words “Bibliothek der Erstausgaben”. I suppose that could be menacing, under certain circumstances, like if Homeland Security had just issued a warning about 18th century German Lit geeks who might be traveling to the opera. Simon Boccanegra, even worse, it was still the Bush II administration then.
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Cool – did you get to hear about organic farming?
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I did. It was interesting but then most everything about food production interests me.
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I can’t remember ever meeting someone who had an uneventful flight! lol
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Depends on your definition of uneventful 🙂 For me, no delays, no sickness and no one kicking the back of my seat equals a win.
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I would settle just for no crying babies behind me. lol
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