The people you meet on the plane

Murray told me "You don't have to talk about my insecurities on your blog." But she also didn't say I couldn't. So let's begin with the women I have met on the plane rides starting this leg of the trip.

I often meet interesting people on planes. So, as we ambled around the tarmac getting ready to leave Denver, I considered an opening statement for the guy to my left with the unruly red hair and librarian style glasses as he read his graphic novel. The young woman on my right beat me to it. "I can't believe it is 31 degrees in Atlanta!" She complained, moving her hands over the bare olive arms that stuck out the bottom of her t shirt to illustrate her wardrobe insufficiency.  Later I would find that Gloria was quite proud of the pull ups she could do with those arms.  To be honest, in the hundreds of trips I have made to dozens of gyms, I have never seen a woman perform more than 2 unassisted pull ups.

She fidgeted with some overpriced air port lip balm.  Compulsive?  I asked.  She looked at me quizzically.  I noticed after you put the lid back on the lip balm you lined up the markings on the seal.  No, I’m cool she said and twisted the cap to a random angle.  She fidgeted for a while longer with the lip balm before shifting the lid back into alignment and admitting “I may be a little OCD.”  I suppose it takes one to know one.  I explained I was only compulsive but not obsessive.  “However my girlfriend is obsessive but not compulsive so we are an OCD couple.”  “Cute” she replied as she pulled some papers from the seatback; reading over her shoulder I could see she was being deployed in the marines.

We discussed at length the novelty of being a female marine.  She was the youngest girl in a family with five brothers.  She explained her attitude towards motherhood with “I don’t think motherhood is for me, when I hear a baby crying my first thoughts at a solution are a punch to the face.”  She wanted to be in the infantry but discovered she was a girl.  So the closest she could get was driving troop transport.  When I asked what drew her to the marines she said her deeper desire was to blow stuff up.

Despite the machismo she admitted to being a girl.  She said after her stint in the marines she thought she might like to be a cop as that was another way she could help people, while carrying a gun and bashing some heads.  We talked about gays in the military and the marines different attitude in recent polls.  She started with not wanting to be looked at by lesbians in the locker room.  Then she said she could understand the combat guys having more of a qualm than she really did.  She hit her point home with a splayed finger hand gesticulation saying she couldn’t really articulate her views on the matter.  This for me was one of her deeper expressions of femininity.  She was rather articulate and wasn’t short on pointed words at any other time during the conversation.

We also discussed our different experiences being in marching band.  She plans to take part in civilian band but didn’t want to play sax in the marine band as there was an insufficient amount of blowing things up on musical duty.  I explained my band experience which started off the wrong way.  I was a runt with a chip on my shoulder so I picked the biggest instrument I could carry, the baritone.  Eventually I got weirded out by how tightly knit the school band social fabric was.  She had dated in the band pool and lost her virginity much earlier than I had.  Perhaps I should have stuck with it.

I have my doubts about whether she will go the 10-15 years in the marines she anticipates.  She is well spoken and rather prejudiced against the under-educated which she freely admits is a problem she has with most of the marines she has been worked with.  She also has some growing to do, as we all do.  I can only hope her growth spurt doesn’t come during a horrific 90 seconds on the Pakistan border involving explosions.

On the next leg of my trip from Atlanta to Lima I sat next to Elna, another single woman.  I would have guessed her age to be around mine, but later I found she was 48.  Elna is the other side of the female coin from Gloria, but also quite interesting.  At first I wasn’t sure if she was a nurse or a doctor.  She works for a doctors without borders type of organization with a heavy presence in Haiti.  Although born in Peru, she has lived in the states for some time and is now dismayed when cab drivers in Peru complement her on her Spanish. 

Her story is almost the twin of my friend Jim.  She always thought she would meet Mr. Right and have kids, but it just never materialized.  Mr. Right didn’t want to have kids and subsequent partners just weren’t quite right.  For a moment I thought “wouldn’t it be great if Elna and Jim could meet”.  And then I thought, “Murray is rubbing off on me.”  Elna apparently has regular opportunities to adopt in Haiti as mothers she treat find out she has no kids and assume she couldn’t have them offering up their 3^rd or 4^th borns to a better life in the states.  I think I am relatively good at engendering trust, but that is a significant statement about how people assess this woman.  And I can see it. 

Elna strikes me as having an idealism that has been worn through the wringer of reality but come out largely in place but tired.  She has mentioned more than twice on disparate topics including men and relationships that she has “high standards” and following the story of her life she obviously has high standards elsewhere.  The world needs more single, experienced, people that can and are willing to head out to the third world again and again to try to contain the suffering.  It is a heck of a lot more than I am doing with my couple hours a week tutoring at the jail.

So I sit on planes, quietly judging people.  For the women I talk to, I also review how much fun it might be to rendezvous in the Lou at thirty thousand feet, were I not happily committed.  Elna claimed to be cynical, but I doubt it is more than the world wariness one ought to expect from her vocation.  The communications professor I met last week, specializing in social media, seemed like he ought to be jaded with all his time in Washington and academia. 

However, the professor seemed genuine when he said I had given him much to think about.  Gloria actually is jaded at her tender age.   I fear she and I have something in common that I am not so fond of.  I think we are both well rehearsed.  I sit next to these people, and we talk for an hour or three, and if I decide they are interesting and I like them, I expect that at subconscious level I would like for them to find me interesting and likeable.  So the well rehearsed stories, quips, and factoids jump out.  These are probably tailored, spun, and presented in a way that I feel will most disarm and allow me to engage with the person.  I shudder to think that I probably do have, in the back of my mind; a list of what I think makes me interesting to others: the Isaac-Murray story, running for office, playing in a rock band, running a business, being raised Mormon etc. etc. 

I went to a talk given by the author Jim Collins.  He had taken on a board of advisors for his personal life.  An advisor gave a bit of insight that resonates.  “Try less to be interesting, and more on being interested.”