Kill Me Now

My seat mate from Halifax to Montreal was a tiny, bird-like woman with a kind face and a fairly thick Newfoundland accent. We settled In and exchanged pleasantries, and I began to get sleepy as I normally do upon takeoff. It was going to be a quick, painless jump to Montreal before the long-haul flight to Athens.

I was right about neither of those predictions. Because no flight is quick when you are sitting next to a woman who is obviously starving for conversation….one-sided conversation. Painless it was not…

I smiled my way through the description of her children and grandchildren. We then moved on to her husband and his unwillingness to travel or do anything that can be considered fun which is why she travels on her own, leaving him in Deer Lake to his small business and preoccupation with the cars that they’ve purchased for their granddaughters. Then it was the children’s divorces and the inability of their exes to handle money or teach children how to be self-sufficient. Quick on the heels of that, descriptions of the various trips she has enjoyed to Florida and Vegas. I had nothing to add on any of these subjects.

I started to rummage around in my backpack, looking for my puzzle book but we were beyond the point of no return as she launched into an explicit tale of the colostomy bag she has to wear and the various operations and bad surgeons that she has crossed paths with and why she must have a window seat to keep the bag out of sight and how there was a time when she had lost all feeling and could not tell when the bowel movement was coming and ended up with a mess all over everything. Then the time she ended up on the floor and her husband had to call an ambulance and she could finally convince the specialist that yes – she was sick…

As the plane landed, she thanked me for being a good seat mate because one time they flew to Vegas and they had some asshole sitting next to them and he caused nothing but trouble for the cabin crew and she was afraid people would think he was with them and then he was next to them on the following flight and obviously someone had shared their personal information with him and she called the Privacy Commissioner and then she emailed them and finally succeeded in getting an apology.

I deplaned as quickly as possible, turned right at the gate, and ran.