Sometimes I wonder if I really see other people. I mean, yeah, I literally see them as living beings inhabiting my world. I’m not weird or crazy or anything. And I’m not asking some kind of existential nor metaphysical question. What I’m trying to say is many people I don’t know personally and encounter in commonplace moments play a distinct role based on their profession or style or look that is jarring when my preconceived notions about that type bump up against a more personal reality. It’s like the ending of Scooby Doo episodes where the ghost is unmasked and it’s hard to reconcile that person being two different things. That’s how I feel sometimes. It’s like a plot twist in the mundane arc of life lived on autopilot. A wtf moment I suppose.
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We were about an hour from home when the pilot came over the loudspeaker and gave us his usual spiel about the approach – distance from the destination, weather on the ground, a mild thank you for choosing the airline, and from this guy a little joke. He was having a good day, excited to be getting home apparently. I was trying to watch a movie. The interruption was mildly annoying, but useful in this case. I hit the pause button and quickly calculated if I could finish the movie and use the bathroom before landing. I had a solid fifteen minute window.
I got out of my seat by expertly squeezing my body out of the gap between the tray table and arm rest; a maneuver requiring ample skill and agility so the laptop stays in tact on the tray table with headphones resting on the keyboard while I go from sitting to standing in one swift motion. It helps to be in an aisle seat. I’m pretty sure the person sitting next to me was impressed. I thought I saw a look. No matter.
When I got to the restroom I realized there was a line. I wasn’t the only one trying to beat the clock. So I stood in the aisle and watched people. I watched people watching things on their screens, playing games, trying to sleep. I make sure to notice if anyone notices me noticing them so I can quickly look away. Those situations can get awkward. Nobody likes being watched when they’re trying to be their inside, alone selves in public. A feat difficult to achieve when prying eyes are everywhere.
Ten minutes go by before I get to the front of the line. I do an excellent job of watching without being noticed. My plans to finish the movie are probably shot, but now I’m committed to this course. This bathroom is in the very back of the plane where the flight attendants congregate. Today they are just milling around and looking at their phones when we hit a few minor bumps. At first I’m a little worried and consider just returning to my seat but they don’t seem to be concerned so I’m fine too. They are calm and collected, and that makes me the same as a result. Suddenly the seat belt light goes on and we hit a few more bumps.
I look at my watch and consider my options again. We hit some bigger bumps and one of the flight attendants starts to lose her cool practiced external work demeanor. She jumps into her seat and buckles her seat belt quicker than I can consider the relative gravity of the situation. She looks at me standing there like a lost puppy and yells over the roar of engines, much louder in the back of the plane and probably in this moment, to get back to my seat immediately. The fear in her eyes makes me scared. This is a person who flies hundreds of thousands of miles a year and serves the worst humanity has to offer with a practiced smile and now they’ve dropped the mask and are relating to me on a personal, more human level. I think we’re going to be okay, and in the end we were, but the moment stuck with me. During that whole trip, and many others just like it, she was a side character in my narrative. A fake smiling face getting me from point A to point B. But this one time she leapt out of the periphery and into a primary role devoid of all pretense.
When we finally landed and were de-planing I watched her closely, but she never looked in my direction.
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I once worked as a busboy at Red Lobster. The only lasting memories of the job are the amazing number of complimentary crayons children buried in apple sauce, the sheer amount of crab people could eat on all-you-can-eat crab leg days, and garlic rolls I ate by the handful as a kind of low wage employee tax. If I was going to be made to suffer then bread would be used to compensate.
One day I was working a weekend lunch shift, sweeping up around a table, probably scooping up crayons, crab, and apple sauce, when I saw my former Algebra teacher eating with her husband and high school aged daughter. They seemed so normal, but that wasn’t what struck me in the moment. Instead, it was the realization that she was a fully formed person with family and responsibilities and feelings and everything else that comes with prototypical suburban life. She didn’t just appear in the classroom on Mondays through Fridays then disappear into the ether, only to do it again the next week.
It was hard to reconcile because of how different she was in the classroom. She was the kind of teacher cruel students would snicker about behind her back. Her drab clothes and out of style hair didn’t endear her to the student body, but a lot of teachers fail the cool facade test of discerning teenagers. No, the reason she was ridiculed was because of how distant she seemed. She spoke and acted like an automaton. I never heard her voice change nor show the least bit of excitement about anything. She never uttered a single personal anecdote or told a light-hearted joke. She was all about the business of Algebra all the time. I sometimes wondered how she maintained that demeanor for however many classes she taught a day and for however many years. It was exhausting to consider.
But in that moment, out of context, she was a mother and wife and American middle class everywoman enjoying an objectively terrible meal in a terrible restaurant designed as a simulacrum of a casual seaside tavern.
Now I look back and see myself standing there holding a broom, wearing a fish themed button up shirt, rushing around to get my work done, and wonder: how did she see me, if she saw me at all?
GLAZ 