I rarely engage in conversation with strangers on a plane. One exception was when I was flying cross country to try to get my senile mother moved into a nursing home. A young Brazilian woman started talking to me because she wanted to practice her English. She asked me why I was going to Chicago and I briefly told her, without too many details. She kept asking questions, so I explained the difficult situation and how I was dreading the trip (it turned out even worse than I expected). She asked if I had siblings to help, and I told her that my only sibling had died three years earlier. Further on in the conversation some topic caused me to mention that my wife had also died two years ago. She paused for a moment and then said, “Before we started talking, I was thinking about my problems. Now I realize I don’t have any problems.”
Trevor Noah would be on my short list. Maybe Jim Gaffigan.
Nah, I don’t want to be next to someone barefoot on a plane.
Didn’t work out too well for his other seatmates…
Lindsay Ellis. I find her adorable and we’d have lots of geeky topics to talk about.
Second choice: her former boss at Channel Awesome, Doug Walker. Again, we’d have oodles of geek stuff to talk about.
I once had a bus trip, not a plane trip, where I found my seatmate fascinating. I was 18, and travelling from Prague to Vienna. I sat next to a woman who was English, but had grown up in Ireland, and never married, and was now in her 70s, and on a tour of Eastern & Central Europe, because she’d never seen it and wanted to-- this was iron curtain days.
She had just retired as headmistress of a girls’ school in Kenya that she had founded, and it was the second girls’ school in Africa she had founded-- I don’t remember the country of the other one, though.
I had just finished high school, and had done and seen practically nothing, and she had done and seen so much! and could tell stories so well! Even the story about whether she needed and Irish or UK passport was interesting.
And she was tiny-- when we parted, and she had a big suitcase to carry to her connection in the train station, I offered to help, but she said no, and picked it up, and dashed off with it. That was the last I saw of her, running with that big suitcase. But I’ll never forget her.
I’m sure she is no longer with us-- though if she lived to see the year 2000, it would not shock me-- but I would happily resurrect her for that long flight, now that I think about it.
Oliver Sacks (RIP). I’ve read a couple of his books and listened to interviews. Fascinating and, seemingly, very pleasant guy.
Roger Penrose.
Dr. Chumley could see him, too.
Sometimes I think Vita could, too.
I thought he reversed himself later? I could be mistaken.
You mean he reined himself in?
I think Mr. Shimelphlatzer would be more interesting. The things he saw go through that gate must’ve been fun.
Unlike some here I don’t want to sit next to my spouse. We both like the aisle so we sit across from each other.
That’s what we do!
My parents did that, too.
My husband and i both like window seats. We sometimes sit tandem. More often, one takes it there and the other back.
Family members aside, I think I’d go with the Dormouse from Alice in Wonderland. Small, adorable and would sleep through the entire flight except when the tea came by.
It would likely lead to a rampage that far exceeds most of the insane misbehavior that makes the news these days!
Back in the late 1980s, they were just starting to pass bans on smoking on airplanes. Initially only on flights 2 hours or less. I flew from Indianapolis to Newark, and there was a woman nearby who was so stressed by the inability to smoke that she spent the entire flight handling an unlit cigarette - clearly counting the nanoseconds until we landed and she could get off the plane and light up.
As far as who NOT to sit next to: someone else’s kid would rank high on my list. I once flew from California to either Chicago or Dallas. I had the aisle seat, and had 2 10-year-old girls in the window and center seats. One or the other “had to” get up roughly every 20 minutes.
I would pick Stewart Copeland, drummer and founder of The Police. First, I adore his drumming, but, more importantly, every interview I’ve ever seen with him, he is just such an enthusiastic and interesting personality. I could easily talk to him for hours.
:across the aisle high five:
Yeah, Herman saw tons of stuff! As much as the taxi driver probably and more.