Overheard: Flight 2901 from Norfolk to Houston

Plane Work, 2010

(The people seated around me included a group of teenage boys on their way to Mexico for a church mission trip.)

“When we get to Houston we’ve got a three-hour layover, then a two-hour flight and then a four-hour drive. Rest up, boys!”

“Will the church be ready when we get there?”

“I’m hungry. Don’t they have any food on this plane?”

“Do you know Wallace? Momma says he’s the best pastor ever.”

“Are we ever going to land, or what?”

“How do I look?”

“When we were little you used to just look at yourself in the mirror and pop your knuckles.”

“I got to spend a day with my husband. He just got home from a year in Afghanistan. I couldn’t stay longer because I’m studying to be a hairdresser in Arkansas. You know, you can’t miss a day when you’re doing that or you might miss something important.”

“I think you ought to stuff that deer and put it in your den. I can’t believe you don’t display the deer you’ve shot.”

“They can’t make me wear a seat belt. [Pause] Can they?”

“I don’t have much vacation time. I have tons of doctors’ appointments. I have a lot of problems.”

“Do we have time to shop? Oh, I hope we have time to shop.”

“Are the people where we’re going white?”

“Do the have Wal-Marts in Texas?”

“Why are the pieces of the wing coming apart?”

“Why’d you buy such cheap tickets?”

“We didn’t see no dead people.”

[It occurred to me as I transcribed these scribbled notes from the back of a boarding pass that someone might think my “Overheard” posts are the result of determined eavesdropping on my part. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The reason I’m usually provoked to capture these comments is because they were spoken so loudly that they interrupted whatever it was I was doing by people who seemed to believe they were either in a cone of silence or so important that everything they said should be required listening for everyone within thirty feet.]