I flew to Calgary yesterday and had been assigned the emergency exit second row, window seat with no seat in front of me, middle seat empty. Score!! Before the plane had even taxied to the runway, the gentleman in the aisle seat had told me that while his 17-year old college-bound daughter didn’t have a drug problem, he was concerned about her drinking. This was, evidently, a big worry, because while he and his wife had at first not wanted any children at all, after nine years of marriage they changed their mind but then had only been able to conceive the once.
Before he could enlighten me further (and I have to assume that was the direction we were heading), the flight attendant came by to discuss with the Emergency Exit Rows Commandos our moral and legally binding duties in case the pilot had been drinking and hit a curb on take-off. When the question came up (and isn’t there always one of those guys?) on precisely how to remove the cover blocking the handle, we were informed that it was basically a velcro-type system and therefore the adrenaline rush would be enough to guarantee that any technique would suffice. The woman in the middle seat in front emergency exit row took this as her cue to lean around the back of her seat and let me in on the personal factoid that she actually didn’t have adrenal glands.
This second disclosure became even more intriguing when the woman’s adult daughter, sitting beside her, exclaimed, “You don’t?! Why not?” Mom informed us all together that they had taken it out when they had removed her tumor.
What is it about commercial air travel that incites people to share these kinds of intimate personal details with total strangers? The woman hadn’t seen fit to inform even a closes relative of her adrenal-gland free condition, yet she risks dislocating her spine to fill me in with the very same insight. And who knows where the man in 17D would have wound up without the intervention of the "In The Event Of An Emergency" lecture, after which I opened my book so quickly that I nicked my nose on the corner. Does some kind of “seat buddy” social bonding kick in? Or is it as simple as the protection of anonymity converging with the opportunity to vent? If that’s the case, it’s much cheaper to just start a blahg.
