Most Interesting Plane Ride
I used to fly as an unaccompanied minor a lot as a kid. I would visit my Dad, who lived in North Carolina, for almost the whole summer between all of my school years. I flew with my sister a lot at first but as she got older I went on more flights as a solitary unaccompanied minor. It wasn’t as bad as I had first assumed it would be, but the process you go through to fly is actually kind of scary when you’re between four and five feet tall.
There was one summer flight back to my mom I remember really well. My Dad took me to the airport by himself and we ended up talking while waiting for my flight to arrive. We talked for a while and reminisced about what we had done that summer. It was actually pretty great quality time with him and it made leaving that much harder.
All too soon I had to board my plane because unaccompanied minors always board at the very beginning of the flight. So, I was seated in my nice window seat in this small two seater plane, praying that it wasn’t some sweaty fat man that sat beside me. In the end the entire plane filled up and it was a actually a seemingly nice middle aged woman that ended up in the seat next to mine, the only problem was that I couldn’t stop thinking about my Dad and how I wouldn’t be seeing him for almost a whole year. I knew it wasn’t the right time or place for what I did next but, I started softly crying into the pillow I had brought onboard with me. I had the window seat, so no one would see my face and if I stopped crying before long I had hope that my face would not hold the tell-tale redness that someone who has been crying always seems to have.
I don’t remember exactly how, but the lady sitting next to me seemed to notice that I was crying and just, sort of leaned over and asked me what was wrong in the way that only mothers seem to know how to do. At first I didn’t want to talk to her, I mean stranger danger right? Over a little bit of time though, I realized that she didn’t mean to do anything bad, and honestly how could she when we were in a crowded plane anyway? In any case, she kept trying to talk to me until I finally said something to her. I don’t remember what we said to each other at first but the