I could tell from a few steps away that he was in a very "happy" place. Then, when he turned in to our row, he gave a little wiggle to prove that point to me. He reeked of booze and BO and talked non-stop, and all I could thing was "this is who I have to sit beside for two hours?!" I couldn't believe they'd let someone so obviously drunk on the plane and as he started chatting me up about where he had been, where he was going, someone he met in the terminal, blah, blah, blah. I started thinking of ways that I could graciously exit the conversation and ignore him.
A few minutes later, the pilot made a vague announcement about how he could only start one engine so we'd have to do an air start. This makes me freak out. I'm picturing us halfway in the air and then starting the second engine, which of course would fail, plunging us to our ultimate doom.
Then something extraordinary happened. Drunk Man started to explain what was happening and it was only the engine that ran the generator that starts the motor to run the auxiliary services. He went through the procedures item by item and as we approached each procedure, he turned out to be right. That's when it hit me how often my first impression of others gets me into trouble and how later some people I really dislike end up being great friends and how others I've really liked turn out to be, well, not so much friends. Apparently, I never really learn to stop pre-judging people.
He also gave me a good tidbit or two - one was to count the rows of seats to the exit door in case of an "emergency landing". "Three rows and hang a right", he said. Bet I do that on every flight now. Yup, Drunken Chatty Charlie is the one person I'd like beside me if the plane goes down.
No comments:
Post a Comment