Friday
Well the day was off to an interesting start. All the flights from ABQ (Albuquerque) to ATL (Atlanta) were oversold…and yes I should not have been surprised as Spring Break arrived. So my plans for a straight shot to ATL quickly turned to a double leg through CVG (Cincinnati). I made the full flight out to CVG around 1:30 and of course got the middle-seat. Ah yes the middle seat, everyone’s favorite seat where two large people are almost always sure to overflow into your seating space, your looking room is only straight in front of you cause anything in your peripheral vision and beyond is now an invasion of their privacy, and where you have no rights to the arm rests. You know the drill. That was a lovely two and half hours, but it got the job done.
CVG to ATL came with no problems, plenty of room on the plane, only there were sixty-two non-revs; so the space quickly became middle-seat torture for the last thirty that made it aboard. Luckily I got a window seat. It was a two-person row with plenty of leg space and looking room. Right as I put my headphones in, the lady who was to occupy the seat next to me arrived. We got our stuff all situated and without a second to spare she introduced herself.
Hunter Frazer was a beautiful well-to-do woman in her mid-forties. She had a smile so graceful and eyes so piercing as to never go unnoticed. As our small talk came to an end she continued to induce conversation. For the next two hours, this lady poured her heart out about her failing marriage to the love of her life, the beautiful children they had, the wonderful family whom she treasures, and the wonderful memories of her past.
I never imagined I could look in the window of one woman’s life of love, hurt, and hope. Hunter married the man she fell in love with, a Marine JAG officer, when she was 21. She followed him for over 20 years and recanted all the fond memories of being a military wife. However she was in the middle of a divorce as her husband had a second affair and took every bit of trust left to walk on, away with him. The tears in her eyes came from the sincerity in her heart and the smile she always resorted back to was the hope she had for the future. She made such an impression on me that I don’t believe I will ever forget her or her story.
I arrived in ATL at 9:30 after a long day of traveling of middle-seat madness and a brief look into a stranger’s life. But in the end it was just another interesting day across America.
Sunday
The day started with an early flight from ATL to VPS (Fort Walton Beach). I arrived an hour before my flight, but to my surprise, the security line was so beyond backed up that I was sure I wasn’t going to make my flight. As I got in line, I noticed a young man in front of me. Well it wasn’t too long before we both were stressing about making our flights and he introduced himself to take his mind off of the situation.
Carson was a senior at Georgia Tech studying some kind of engineering. He was on his way to Philadelphia for a conference for a possible summer internship with the nation’s best in his particular field of study. It wasn’t long before we started to talk about March Madness. He had his money on North Carolina and I had mine on Tennessee.
We talked for the next thirty minutes as we traveled through, what seemed to be, the never-ending line. By the time we went through security, our brief conversation of college life and basketball turned into smiles and wishes of good luck.
On the airplane I sat in between a man in his mid forties and a woman in her late twenties. Yes, another adventure in the middle seat, I’m practically a pro at sitting between people now. A few minutes after take off the woman next to me started a conversation about how late we were taking off. She was quite irritated to say the least; I just nodded and smiled, knowing that it’s fairly common for this kind of occurrence. The man on my left jumped in and decided to irritate her further by exclaiming the baggage claim always takes forever in VPS. It was quite humorous after our conversation had continued for a good twenty minutes. The man on my left was definitely Mr. Optimistic, volunteering his time every summer to teach English in third-world countries and on my right was Captain Negative, who’s reason for still being single is because she’s stuck in the air force and has nothing better to do. As you can imagine the conversation was quite amusing…smiles on the left side of me and negative sarcasm on the right. I put my headphones on and tried to enjoy the rest of my middle seat flight.
