Five Minutes On An Airplane

Five Minutes On An Airplane


It was subtle, like a sneeze strangled right before it threatened to be born. The old lady sitting in the seat on my left throwing her glass-like eyes over at me in a stare I found to be both rude and funny at the same time. Her hands were wrinkled and leathery and gave promise of nothing else but a hard slap and a sloppy handshake.

As I would quickly glance back at her once my senses informed that she was indeed staring at me again, she averted her eyes, pretending to read her book. Eventually, out of boredom more than anything else, I turned it in to a game.

The rules of the game wasn’t very clear to me at the time, but the goal was to see how fast I could make her turn her head back; a small sadistic part of me imagined that if I did it really fast, it might force her neck to snap and I would be left alone for the remainder of the flight.


The game quickly got boring as I started finding her interruptions more and more antagonizing and soon an urge to confront her began to squirm in the back of my head like an itch that didn’t want to fade away.

She was getting more aggressive now, not bothering to look away as quick as she first had done.

I began to look around the cabin in a half-hearted attempt to see if this was some sick joke played on me by the old lady and the rest of the passengers. Through no fault of my own, my eyes locked to hers as I prepared to resume my uncomfortable position in which I had spent the last seven hours.

This time, however, she didn’t budge. Her eyes didn’t retreat to her book but merely chose to hang in the air, staring right back at me.

“Can I help you?” I asked, hoping that my politeness might prevent the situation from going sour.

“What’s her name?” the lady replied and thoroughly confused me. “I beg your pardon?” My voice doing nothing to hide my level of discomfort. The old lady sighed, shifted in her tiny seat and repeated the question in a manner that suggested she was not up for playing games.

“What’s her name?”
“I hardly think –“the lady now drew a breath of interruption and folded her book back in her purse.

“I’ve been looking at you for several hours and it is clear…you’re going to see someone, aren’t you?” I finally broke her stare and shifted in my seat. The level of insight the woman had was terrifying, but most of all I felt disappointed that she wasn’t just a regular old lady with a shallow case of some mental disorder.

“Is it that obvious?” was the boring answer I was able to muster up, deciding to drop the charades and let my guard down. She closed her eyes and nodded victoriously, silently asking me to give her the name I had been thinking about for the last seventeen hours. “Her name is Pearl.” I yielded and the light in the old lady’s eyes somehow doubled in effect, making her appear younger.

“That is a very beautiful name.” she stated. I nodded and shifted in my seat again as if to invite her in to deeper conversation. She shifted towards me in a silent acceptance of my invitation.
“Tell me about her.” She said in a manner that suggested I had a speech already prepared and well rehearsed, ready to be presented at any given moment in time.

I did.

I told her about the first time I had laid eyes on you, how your gracious appearance had struck a match deep within me and set fire to the old, worn-out oven that had once passed itself off as my heart. I told her about your voice and how it reminded me of clean spring mornings, crisp air but with a soft, mellow breeze that gave promise of a summer unlike anything before.

My eyes drifted off in to the cabin as I told her about your hands and how badly my body wanted to make contact with them, how every fiber of my being longed to feel your skin gently rubbed up against mine during long, lazy mornings with nothing planned for the day.

The old lady nodded and politely smiled whenever my cheeks gave in to the urge of blushing, as was a customary thing for them to do whenever you came up in conversation. There was something about the old lady’s aura that suggested she knew what I was talking about; she had experienced love. As she briefly told me the story of how she and her husband had met, fifty years spent over French-press coffee and annual excursions to places they had previously never set foot in, I couldn’t stop my mind from putting our own beings in their places.

It was then that I knew.

It would have been more appropriate of me to utter some form of condolences to her when she disclosed the recent passing of her husband, but my head and therefore my manners where long gone, off to some far away beach in the south of France where we had set up camp underneath the fancy shades. Your body continuing to throw me off balance as it was clad in a perfect bikini, your hair blowing slowly in the salty summer breeze whilst your eyes were protected against the sun by in-style sunglasses.


A silence followed and I realized that the old lady had in fact stopped talking. She resumed her stare and something in her eyes told me that she knew where my head was. She urged me not to hold back and once I was re-united with the woman I loved I was to take time every day and tell her how much I loved her.

As much of a cliché as it might have sounded to other passengers passing by or eavesdropping, it sounded to me like the best advice I had ever gotten.

The conversation came to a natural stop and there was no need for a final word. I checked my watch anticipating it to reveal that our heart to heart had lasted several hours. Shocked as I was to acknowledge it had only lasted five minutes, it felt strangely appropriate.

After all, five minutes earlier she had only been an annoying old lady that kept on looking over at me, seemingly having no interest in me or what was on my mind. Now, she had emerged as a mentor, an illuminated player in the game of love, knowing all its secrets and hideaways.

And for that, I will always be grateful.