Blast from the Past

Here's something I wrote about a year ago, I'm guessing.

Today I flew back from Oregon to Provo, and for some reason a question people keep asking is, “how was your flight?” This seems like an odd question to me, since in my experience virtually all flights are the same. You get on, take off, land, and get off. One time I threw up on a plane, but that’s about as eventful as any of my flights have ever been.

And what do people really EXPECT you to say? “Well, we almost crashed, but the pilot was able to pull us out of that nose dive at the last second. It was a close one!” Do exciting things actually happen on flights? And often enough that it warrants the question, “How was your flight?”

But, just for fun I thought I’d tell you all exactly how my flight was. I was one of the first five people on the plane, so I decided to sit in the front. I was secretly hoping (as I always do) that a cute girl who was further behind me in the line would sit by me. This, by the way, NEVER happens. It has been my strategy all through college. Go into a big auditorium classroom, sit somewhere near the back, with two empty seats on both sides. So far, it’s never worked. I’ve watched an estimated 15,000 cute girls walk right by me and sit somewhere else in such situations. Conversely, I’ve had about 15,000 awkward dudes sit by me in those same scenarios. I always look at them like, "Are you serious? Don't you see what I'm trying to do here?" But they never seem to catch on. Anyways, I’ve learned my lesson, that if I want to sit by a cute girl, I’m the one who’s going to have to sit by HER. I suppose I’m not handsome enough to have the tractor beam affect on women.

Back to the girl on the plane. I was sitting patiently, hoping that my old “get-cute-girl-to-sit-by-me” strategy would work. First, a guy took the isle seat, leaving only the seat between us. Then, all of a sudden, I saw a really cute girl enter the plane. I made sure my jacket and things weren’t obstructing the middle seat, making it a more appealing choice. Then out of nowhere the old, grizzled, decomposing man directly in front of her sat down next to me (and when I say decomposing, I’m not trying to be funny. Seriously, I think he had leprosy). He was approximately 8 feet tall, and his right elbow was digging into my ribs the whole flight. I don’t know what happened to the girl, and in retrospect I’m ok with that. We probably would have engaged in some short, 5 minute small-talk-type dialog, which would have no doubt been followed by approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes of awkward silence/shifting through carry-ons.

The other eventful part of the trip also involved an old man, only this one was slightly less decrepit and much more creepy/molester-y (which I’m pretty sure is not an adjective). He would ask almost every girl who walked by the following question: “ARE YOU A BYU GIRL?” He was semi-yelling, not because it was hard to hear in the plane, but because he’s old, and that’s what old people do. When the girls would say yes, he would say the following: “THERE’S ABOUT (insert large exaggerated number here) BYU GIRLS ON THIS PLANE!” His numbers LITERALLY went from 1000, to 50, to 100, and back to 50 again. What exactly happened to the 950 other BYU girls on the plane during that time span?

He started adding some real zingers like, “THERE ARE ABOUT 50 BYU GIRLS ON THIS PLANE, AND THEY’RE ALL GOOD LOOKIN’.” At one point he turned around in his seat and asked the girls behind him, “ARE YOU ALL BYU GIRLS?” When they said yes, he responded, “LET’S SEE, 4 BYU GIRLS, AND ALL OF ‘EM GOOD LOOKIN’.”

Now I might be overreacting, but I really don’t think 80 year old dudes should be telling college girls how good looking they are, even if it is in a friendly, non-threatening, grandpa kinda way, if for no other reason than it makes ME uncomfortable. Maybe it’s just because an 80 year old man had the balls to tell virtually every girl who got on the plane that she was lookin’ good, while I coward in the corner of the plane next to sasquatch’s grandfather.

After the flight, the guy appeared out of nowhere at the baggage claim and started talking to the three “BYU boys” next to me. This was their dialog:

“YOU FELLAS BYU BOYS?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“THERE WAS ABOUT 50 BYU GIRLS ON THE PLANE, NOT TOO MANY BOYS THOUGH.”
“Why are you talking to us?”

The most interesting part of that experience was seeing who the old man ASSUMED to be BYU boys and girls, because if there were any doubt in his mind, he would ignore them as they walked by. A couple of guys wearing skater hats and sweatshirts, while sporting a couple of “ungodly” piercings walked by, and the old man looked away, quickly returning to his Readers Digest article. A girl wearing a hoodie (with hood ON) who seemed to have a hint of “attitude” walked by and also got the “don’t look the freak in the eye” treatment from the old man.

In case you were wondering, he never asked me if I was a BYU boy. I guess I just don’t fit the mold.