It would have been better if I could hear more clearly

This Memorial Day weekend, I went to SFO. I live in Boston so it was a very long flight. Now we all know the bad things about a long flight; strange smells, feeling hungry when there is no food around, need to pee when you have a window seat and both the aisle and centre seat guys are sleeping. My worst experience was when I had the centre seat on a flight from Paris to Dallas and both window and aisle seat guys were sleeping and snoring into my ears. I swear I wanted to die that day (or night, my time zones were screwed up).

Anyway, this weekend none of these terrible things happened to me. On my flight, 31A and 31B was occupied by an unkempt young man and very pretty girl in red sweatshirt. As soon as we boarded the flight, they started talking. I could hear only the sweatshirt talk, but not clearly enough to make sense of what they were talking about. As irritating as it was, it reminded me of my days of college in India.

I studied at a place about 2 hour away from home and used to come home every weekend. We used to travel by bus and while most of my friends dozed off, I and gags would spend almost entire time talking. We weren’t loud or animated, just incessant. We never thought we were disturbing anyone, until one day a passenger decided it was enough. He waited till gags was off the bus and round me up telling me how stupid we and our debates were and how we knew nothing about life. Never the one with quick comebacks, I just let him lecture me. It was humiliating. Although it didn’t fix me for too long, I always looked around in the bus for him before I took my seat.

Watching unkempt and sweatshirt talk continuously brought back memories of my days and as irritated as I was, I was jealous that she was traveling with a good friend, while I almost always travel alone these days. When we landed, I took another look at them and I heard unkempt say to sweatshirt, “It was nice meeting you”.

What?? They had just met in the plane!

As I stepped out of the plane, unkempt caught up with one of his friends who was also in the same plane. Friend asked him, “Dude who was that girl. We could hear her all the way.” Unkempt said, “I don’t know man, she is gone so its not like I am going to get to fuck her. Why did I have to listen to her!”

While I walked away, I wanted to tell unkempt that while he was listening hoping to get laid, women rarely pour their hearts out to men we wish would see us naked. From where I stand, sweatshirt had it all planned out.