Dreamy Paper Airplanes

Am I the only person who boards an airplane hoping to sit by a baby or at least a kid? Maybe so. Unfortunately I usually don't get to, but when I fly on Southwest I have have an advantage because I get to choose my own seat and families with kids board first, so theoretically I should be able to find a baby to sit by! Well this summer I got on fourteen airplanes and I didn't get to sit by a single baby! As I boarded my 14th airplane I finally spotted the seat that I'd been waiting for. There was a row about halfway through the cabin that only had one person sitting in it...a little African American boy staring excitedly out the window. Perfect! I sat down in the aisle seat hoping that no one would sit between us and we'd have some room but before too long a woman came walking down the aisle about to steal my seat next to the little boy! Woah lady! Hold up! That's my kid to make friends with! You can't go stealin' my kid! I quickly scooted over into the middle seat and we were both happy...she with her newly acquired aisle seat and me with my future friend still safely next to me.

I asked him if he was flying by himself and he pointed at his mom and big sister in the row behind him. His sister had also wanted a window seat so his mom had told him that he could sit one row in front of them. I could see that he had no backpack or bag in front of him. No books. No iPad. Just good old fashioned talking, which we did for quite a while. I learned that his name was Alan and he was going into 2nd grade on Monday and He liked looking at pictures of my twin and Disneyland (basically the only pictures I had on my tablet because they're the most important. Obviously!). I taught him how to make paper airplanes from pages I ripped out of my journal and we put our little pretzels from the airplane snack packs in our paper airplanes and threw them back between the seats to his sister who giggled behind us. We spent three marvelous hours talking and spotting animal shapes in the clouds and making paper airplanes and playing hangman until our plane descended into the Los Angeles airport. We got our carry-ons and said goodbye and went on our merry little separate ways. 

I always enjoy airplane rides...something about the large, uninterrupted chunks of time in which I have nothing to do but journal and read. Now, while I love both those things dearly, you know what I love even more? Making little paper airplanes with a friend I just made three minutes ago. Why is it that I spend three minutes with an adult and I've barely learned his name, but three minutes with a kid and we're already fast friends making paper airplanes together? Just wondering. Flight number fourteen was by far the dreamiest of the summer!

-Beth

Our snack plane about to take flight

The tray table runway