My main goal on an airplane is to maintain silence. I don’t want to chat with the person next to me. I don’t want to meet new people. In over 20 years of non-stop business travel I can count on one hand the number of people I have met on a plane with whom I have had any desire to converse.
I generally manage this quite well: I retreat into a polite but stony silence, sitting next to the window, making myself as small as possible. I plug in my headphones and bury my face in a book. This usually does the trick, but some people, like Frieda will not be dissuaded.
Frieda was 45-ish and looked like she had her hair cut with a Weed Whacker. She was returning, giddy, from a Las Vegas junket and was determined to chat. Ignoring her was not a possibility so I brought out the heavy artillery.
“So,” she said, “Where are you going?” I looked her in the eye and said I was traveling for a consultation with an infectious disease specialist. This generally quiets the average chatterbox, but not Frieda, so I mentioned that I had to get special permission from my probation officer to leave town.
Frieda was unfazed and was about to give me an hour-by-hour breakdown of her Las Vegas trip. Inspired, I mentioned that I had been raised in Las Vegas; in a bordello. Frieda finally got silent and her eyes grew wide. “Was your father OK with that?” she finally asked.
I shrugged. “Who knew?” I said darkly. Appalled, Frieda lapsed into a stony silence for the rest of the flight, and I happily read my book, thinking “Mission accomplished.” I had only a brief pang for sullying the reputation of my 90-year-old mother who was educated in convent schools and reared under the eye of a strict German mother who used to wait on the front porch with a rolling pin until my mom came home from dates with my father.
I certainly never thought of Frieda ever again, but several weeks later I took my mom to the doctor and there in the waiting room was Frieda. She recognized me at once and after some banal pleasantries she looked at my mother. “And who is this?” she asked me.
With a jolt I remembered my airplane story and was momentarily speechless, but my mother stepped in. “I am Guy’s mother,” she said grandly.
Frieda’s eyes narrowed. “I hear you were quite the wild one in your day,” she said. “I broke my share of hearts,” my mother said proudly, as I cringed.
“I’m sure,” said Frieda; “how many hearts did you break?” My mother shrugged nonchalantly. “It was World War II,” she said. “Who counted?” She smiled at the memory. “The nuns told us it was our patriotic duty to entertain the troops.” This stunned Frieda into another silence.
“Was Guy born during the war?” said Frieda. Horrified, I said “Not that war,” at the same time Mom said, “No, I had many children before Guy came along. It was an exciting time of my life.”
If Frieda debated the propriety of this conversation, her desire for lurid details eventually won out. “After so long was it hard to leave that life behind?” she asked.
I felt like I was watching a train wreck because my mom now lives with my sister who has several cats, which is the source of a running family joke. “My life is just fine,” said Mom. “Thank God I’m used to living in a cat house.”