True Stories Aren’t Always Easy to Tell
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“Are you travelling alone?” the flight attendant asked with a polite urgency. I was one row from the very back of the plane, but had settled into an aisle seat where I could at least recline, stretch out my leg, and not have to hop over people to reach the restroom. I like to hydrate when I travel. It gets stuffy on an airplane.
A brown-skinned man walked towards us, plaintive and looking like he was missing something. “This man would like to sit with his wife and two children in the row behind you,” the attendant said. I paused, thinking of karma and good deeds. “There’s a middle seat waiting for you all the way up front in row 11.”
Ugh, middle seats.
“You’ll get off sooner,” she suggests with a half-sincere smile.
“I’d be happy to.”
I grabbed my backpack and shuffled past the family man, looking behind me to see him sitting down in arm’s reach of his two little girls. I was pleased with myself and my dedication to sacrifice. A middle seat! But I would endure it. After all, what if my 6-year old was split from me 36,000 feet in the air? It was the right thing to do.
