Monday, September 1, 2008

Kelli in Wonderland


by Kelli Payne
Saturday, August 16, 2008

Time travel is hard, at least for me. I’ll journal this day as Saturday but it was more like an endless morning. I wish I could journal about profound insights and conversations but the truth is I ate, slept and watched airplane movies like “What Happens in Vegas.” I have this inclination to apologize for the truth but, happily, I am refreshed to simply share. My realizations include the following:

1) I love the Luthansa flight attendants. They are nice, attentive and overall ROCK.
2) I was mad at the United flight attendant because he wouldn’t give me a glass of water and I was parched. I am still talking about this injustice.
3) For me, sleeping on an airplane is an art. I am 5 11’ and sometimes feel like Alice when she takes the pill that makes her grow and her legs and arms are hanging out of the house.

This idea of comfort rose again for me. I tossed, I turned, I huffed, I puffed. I had 3 pillows, 2 blankets, earplugs, an eye cover and at some point a sleeping pill to get the comfort and rest I deserved. There was an Ethiopian man sitting 2 seats away from me. He looked well dressed and had to be fairly wealthy for an Ethiopian to be on an airplane in the first place. He kept offering me pillows and blankets as an attempt to ease my pain and suffering. At one point, I woke up and looked over at him. He was resting simply by propping his arm on the chair of the seat and resting his head on it. As I made every attempt to find comfort, he displayed no pursuit of it. I am open to the reason being he is older and vastly more mature than I am which is plausible and likely. My feeling is the Ethiopian culture doesn’t have a sense of entitlement to comfort the same way Americans do. They aren’t born with it because of generations of rarely experiencing it. Of course, this is only a hypothesis that would be tested throughout the week.

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