The Airplane Twilight Zone

It just so happens that I have recently been flying quite a lot. Well, let me put this in perspective. Since I can remember, my family has lived so spread out across the states that the closest family member (outside mom/dad/sister) was a six hour car drive away – the others were only reachable by plane. So at least twice a year since, well, whenever I have memories, I’ve been flying. Then, I went and attended college in California, so there were lots of flights. So when I say that I’ve been flying a lot recently, I really mean it. I flew to Budapest at the beginning of the semester, to Germany from Budapest during that semester, and then in the last four weeks, I went: Budapest-Paris-Detroit-Erie –/-- Washington, DC – Istanbul – Frankfurt --/--Frankfurt-Detroit-and in 2 hrs and 12 minutes as the monitor screen tells me, I will land in San Francisco.

There comes a time in transatlantic flights, after whatever boxed up and tiny meal has been delivered in plastic packages, after you’ve gotten the chance to doze just a bit but are really coming to terms with the fact that you won’t properly sleep – when it’s either the middle of the night in the timezone that you’ve just come from or in the one that you are currently flying through, so darkness is either everywhere inside your head or in front of your eyes – and it’s the twilight zone. I don’t think this just happens to me, but then again, I’ve never asked anyone else about it, so maybe I am the only one. Basically, in these moments, you aren’t just concerned with whether or not you’ll have to wake up the person next to you so you can get out to the aisle and head to the bathroom. You’re not worried about making your connections when you land, nor are you thinking of the people waiting to meet you. No – this is when you do serious life-thinking. Sometimes, this might feel like life-panicking, depending on who you are and what time in your life you are making this evaluation. I’m not sure how the situation can make me feel so utterly far from my own life, but I feel as if I’m looking at it through a piece of plastic wrap, or through a see-through tapestry. Funnily enough, I think it has as much to do with being in the middle of the air above the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (at least, in my case) as it does with the fact that I’m traveling alone and haven’t had a real human connection with anyone in hours. I need real contact with people. Real conversations, even if they’re short. Someone who asks how I am and means it, or who comes over for a cup of coffee. But traveling? I’m around more people, far more people, than usual and there is (under normal circumstances) absolutely no human connection.

But sometimes things break that monotony and that together but very separate feeling. For example, today there was a very, very large line of us waiting to go through immigration at the airport. We had just stumbled dazedly off the airplane from Frankfurt, a solid nine hours of flying behind us, stiff and smelling like plane – and I, in particular, felt that I must be sleepwalking since about three and a half weeks ago I did the exact same walk down the seeming miles of gray, unremarkable airport, to I believe the exact same immigration desk and then picked up my bag at the exact same baggage claim carousel. So, that was surreal and I felt the best way to deal with it was to pick a comfy looking spot on the floor and lie down, but of course, I’m getting close to being an adult now, which I think just means that you don’t always do things like lie down and take a nap, - it doesn’t mean you never want to. So, I imagine things were going similarly for most of my fellow travelers. There was the typical shuffling in the line, getting pissed at the person in front of you just because they’re going to get to be done with the line sooner, griping in your head about most things and just realizing how tiring standing can be. So, we were there in the gray no man’s land between plane and US, in lots of little plastic lane dividers and amongst huge signs against cell phones and assaulting officers, not much conversation going on. Then all of a sudden, there was a little dash of pink.

Embodying all of our desires, a girl who couldn’t have been more than four years old had ducked under the dividers (or just walked, I think she was small enough), skirted right under the noses of all the immigration officers (her head didn’t go up to their desks, so how could they notice?) and started wandering around on the other side of this huge international barrier in her flowing, Disney-worthy pink dress. “Uh-oh.” I heard about ten people behind me. Her mother moved through the line, trying to see her on the other side of the desks. We couldn’t see anything since the girl was so small, and despite angry looks from the guards, the mother then ducked under as well and went and tried to find her. A few seconds later, a guard who had been standing with his arms folded, looking both intimidating and bored simultaneously, cried out, “Ah! I’ve found someone!” and he walked back towards the line and when he came around the corner of the desk, we saw the girl hanging tight on to his leg, grinning and waving at her mom, calmly and absolutely refusing to let go.