Flying internationally is such a jarring break from routine that blunders are inevitable. Whether it’s baggage issues or unruly passengers or flight delays, a trip of this magnitude rarely passes without incident. And trying to gain access to another country during a pandemic brings with it a whole new level of stresses and pitfalls. I had no doubt that my journey from South Africa to Korea would make for an interesting blog post.
The Emirates employee was polite. He asked me for my passport, my negative covid test, and my visa in quick succession – all of which I had readily available. I remember feeling a low-level of anxiety at the time. I was certain that there was going to be a problem. I didn’t have a trustworthy scale at home with which to weigh my suitcases. What if I had overpacked? I had also convinced myself that my visa would be rejected, and that my covid test had been administered by a clinic that wasn’t recognized by the airline. But the man at the checkin desk accepted my documentation without complaint, and when I put my bags onto the scale I saw that they were both, miraculously, one kilogram shy of the weight limit.
“Boy!” I said with exaggerated relief. “That was a close one there, hey? Thought I was going to be over the limit!” The man at the checkin desk smiled and kept typing.
I leaned forward and cleared my throat. “Like I thought maybe I was in for a bit of hijinx there, with the luggage.”
The checkin man didn’t respond. I tried a different tack to drum up some drama. “Do I get to choose my seat?” I said. I’ve always preferred an aisle seat. I enjoy the freedom of getting up whenever I choose.
“Well, let’s see…” said the man, typing away on his computer. “The flight is rather crowded today…” Aha. There it is, I thought. I’m going to be wedged into a middle seat between two interesting but annoying people. My blog was already beginning to write itself.
“You’re going to be in an aisle seat, I’m afraid,” said the man.
“Oh,” I said, somewhat disappointed. “At least there won’t be any middle seat capers, then.”
“Erm, no, I suppose not,” said the man at the checkin desk, handing me my ticket.
Soon after I found my seat on the plane, on the aisle in the middle section, another passenger sat down in front of me. Before we’d even taken off, he reclined his seat and threw his arm up behind his head until his fingers were caressing the upper corner of my TV screen. This was a man accustomed to taking up space. He was the type of person to manspread on public transport. He was the type of person to play music loudly from his cellphone in a public area. He vexed me from the very beginning. Straight after we had taken off, he unbuckled his seatbelt and let one strap lie haphazardly right in the middle of the aisle. I had a feeling that he was going to be a high maintenance flyer. I immediately began to take note of him. Perhaps he would be a nuisance during the entire flight, but at the very least I could exact my revenge by writing about him.
The lady sitting next to me, on the other hand, was peaceful. She was middle-aged and wore eyeglasses in tortoiseshell frames. After fussing herself into her seat, and muttering something about it being a crowded flight, she withdrew into herself and didn’t bother me much. I made sure to keep my arm off of her armrest, knowing that being stuck in a middle seat meant not having many luxuries, so she should at least have all the space I could give her.
Once the flight was underway, the chap in front of me reclined his seat again (having been made to straighten it right before takeoff), and once more threw his hand over his head and began touching my screen, causing the movie I was watching to close. Before I could react, he must have realized what he was doing and withdrew his arm. I rolled my eyes at the woman sitting next to me, and opened my movie back up. I noticed that the woman hadn’t yet engaged with the screen in front of her. She hadn’t even unwrapped her headphones. She was just staring straight ahead, regarding whatever airline information that was displayed on her screen.
During the course of that eight-hour flight, my obnoxious neighbour threw his arm back over the seat just once more, causing my movie to pause. This time, I tapped his hand, and he quickly withdrew it. I began to mentally prime myself to talk to him should he do it again. “Look here, pal” I would say the next time he did it, “I’m not here for capers or hijinks, so why don’t you keep your hands to your self, buddy!” But the hand tap seemed to have been enough. The fellow kept to himself for the remainder of the flight. The woman to my left, on the other hand, began to dominate more and more of my attention.
We were a few hours into the flight, and she had still not touched her screen nor asked me if she could get up to use the bathroom. I snuck a few glances at her face to see if she’d fallen asleep, or had become engrossed in a few films, but she was always wide awake, staring straight ahead through her tortoiseshell frames. She was older, so I thought that perhaps she didn’t know how to navigate the TV and was too shy to ask, but we were so far into the flight it felt a bit late to ask. Besides, what right did I have to demand that she entertain herself?
I got up to use the bathroom a few times during that flight, and not once did she use that opportunity to step out of her seat. I tried to signal to her that I was an approachable person. Every time she jostled in her seat I would smile and say “Would you like to get out?” And every time she would smile and say, “Thanks, but I’m fine.” At one point she felt that her seat was too far back, and I quickly jumped into action, reaching for her headrest and helping her pull the seat upright. She thanked me politely, and then continued staring at the screen in front of her.
In the final few hours of that flight I began to get uncomfortable. My legs ached, even though I had taken multiple trips to the bathroom to stretch my muscles. I couldn’t imagine the agony my neighbour was in. She developed the habit of holding onto the seat in front of her and pulling herself forward to stretch her back. It was plain as day that she was uncomfortable. “Just let me know if you want to get out,” I said again, being sure to smile and appear amiable.
She turned to me and with utmost pleasantness said, “Oh thanks, but I won’t.” There was something horrific about that sentence. It was like a message from beyond the grave. She might as well have said, “I’ve been dead for thirty years.” Her meaning, I knew, was that she had no intention of standing up for the entirety of the flight. From the moment she had sat down she knew that she would stay in place until the plane had landed. I couldn’t fathom it. Surely it was impossible for a human being to remain in one place for so long. I could understand it if she had slept through the flight, but she remained awake the whole time, staring straight ahead of her and occasionally pulling herself up to stretch her back.
I began to think about stretching. I had heard many times in the past that it was important to stretch on long flights to prevent blood clots. I’d heard horror stories of people being rushed to hospital after being on planes because they’d been sedentary for so long. I began to worry that something would happen to my neighbour. Did I have a responsibility to force her to stretch? I’m a big believer in bodily autonomy, and I knew I had no business telling this woman what to do. But at the same time I also didn’t want this woman to die once she deplaned. Did she know about blood clots? Should I tell her? Was my silence causing her damage? Am I, as I write this, a murderer?
I had begun my trip wondering what fun little anecdotes I would blunder into, but by the end of that flight I was tormented by the mortality of a stranger. I recalled that she had requested red wine with dinner, and I took solace in the thought that wine thins the blood. Maybe she was going to be okay. I just wished she would watch something!
A few days after that flight, I told a friend about the woman with the tortoiseshell glasses. My friend suggested that perhaps she was an anxious flyer, and this was her way of dealing with it. Maybe fussing about with her TV screen, or negotiating the seatbelt and the aisle and the bathroom would only add to her panic. But none of that occurred to me at the time. All I could think about was how unnaturally this woman was acting, and how uncomfortable it made me feel.
Ultimately, the flight ended without incident. I felt a flood of relief when the woman stood up in preparation to step into the aisle. Being on her feet would surely send blood flowing back to all the necessary places. Surely she was going to be alright. We looked at each other with the expression that strangers always give each other when they share a mildly stressful ordeal.
“Long flight,” she said, smiling.
“It feels so good to stand,” I replied, thinking of her specifically.
So I did not get my capers or hijinks on that trip. I think I would have preferred that to the anxiety caused by the woman who did nothing. But the obnoxious man in front of me had fallen asleep shortly into the flight, and had given me no troubles that I could have turned into a blog post. “And you,” I whispered to him as he reached up to reclaim his carryon bag, “you were useless.”
The Hangul Games 