10th
just breathe…
last Friday was one of those days when things don’t seem to go right. and people kept getting in the way of my plans for a normal day. first, the bus driver kept pulling over to avoid “bus bunching” even though i told her she was going to make me miss my train. the last train to work. clearly, she wasn’t stressing about my problem. so i ended up running in heels the 1/4 mile to the train stop, running up the stairs just as it came to a stop, triggering an asthma attack in the process. that afternoon i left for the airport, on my way to visit my family in Atlanta. plenty of time, i thought, no worries. 2 hours later i’m still stuck on Lake Shore Drive in traffic. oh yes, they’re doing construction on good ole LSD during rush hour on a Friday. i pulled into the Midway airport parking lot (the expensive short-term one, because i was about to miss my flight) and started running to my gate. i slipped and fell in the terminal. i bit it hard and no one even took a second glance to see if me and my heels had survived. i arrived at the gate and the flight was, of course, delayed. when i finally got to my seat i was ready to read, turn on my ipod, drown out the world and, hopefully, sleep.
seated next to me was a sharply dressed middle aged man in a business suit. bonus, i thought, these guys are good travelers - no need to worry about excessive chattiness or a cat in a carry-on bag meowing the whole flight. as a former full-time work traveler, these are the seat companions i crave. i can now put up my wall and pretend we are not almost touching in these tiny seats. we hadn’t even taken off yet when he rang the flight attendant call button. “i don’t feel well. i feel really nauseous.” my first thought - fantastic, seriously? i just want to listen to some Rogue Wave and not get puked on.
then i started to become a little more human. this guy didn’t look good. he looked scared. so i talked to him about his symptoms and tried to reassure him that the peanuts he just ate probably weren’t the culprit. he was really disoriented and sweaty, though. and even though he fell asleep, i couldn’t. i spent most of my flight checking to make sure he was still breathing and trying to keep his ginger ale from spilling on him every time he accidentally knocked his tray. it was kind of a beautiful thing to just watch a person breathe. a stranger. am i creeping you out? no, it wasn’t like that. it just humbled me. life is so fragile. so are people. even the bus driver lady. even me.
