nanoseconds

I had just started off my flight from Montreal to Vancouver, final destination Bali with a very long stopover in Incheon, and I was in for a long trip. I made my way onto the airplane and settled in my seat, pulling out my headphones. I mean, I had already suffered through a very long conversation in the taxi to the airport with a woman who told me all about her porcelain figurine collection and while it was quite fascinating I decided that I would really try hard to avoid airplane small talk. Isn’t it strange how those work, how somehow sitting this close to someone with no immediate escape warrants forced conversations about your life somehow?

Given the long flight ahead, I was kind of hoping that the seat next to me would miraculously be left empty but I knew it was a lot to ask for. I sat in my usual isle seat, because there really is nothing worse than having to climb people to use the bathroom, and lo and behold, shortly after getting seated a man in a very fitted suit appeared next to me indicating his desire to get to his designated spot. I shot him a polite “yes, I have understood what it is you are gesturing” and got up to let him squeeze past me and down into his seat. At least he didn’t look like the kind of guy that would be extremely talkative. I sat back down and placed my headset on my head to indicate that I was ready to enjoy a quiet, yet noisy flight.

As the first song had just started getting its groove on, I felt his eyes resting on me in my poor peripheral vision. I tried to ignore it for a few seconds, but I could tell his lips were moving too. Sigh. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that through these things” I said turning to him, removing my preferred sound off of my ears. He had a hopeful smile on his face, and repeated the question. “So where are you headed today?” My heart sank.
I told him I was going to Bali, and he told me I was going to have a long flight and I told him I know, he he. So I politely returned his question, and he told me he was attending a business meeting in Vancouver and he was a very busy and successful man, and he traveled a lot back and forth. Fascinating. “Oh, you must be used to this then, eh?” I said, smiling, He agreed to his expertise in traveling. Then he fell silent for a minute, so I moved to resume my well thought out playlist, when he continued moving his lips. He asked me what I was planning to do in Bali, and then why I was going there, and then out of concern asked whether or not I was traveling alone and I for some reason answered all of his questions.

But then he told me some interesting things about his work and business ventures, and then we started talking about psychology and next thing I knew we were actually having a conversation that I didn’t mind. These incidents are rare. People are generally very superficial, and as I have come to expect from anyone, I did expect him to ask about my parents line of work and my favourite color. And while we probably touched on those subjects somehow, this conversation became more of a profound dive into each others minds under the understanding that we would probably never meet again. At some point, we found ourselves talking about fate and serendipity. I told him about why I was traveling alone, and how I ended up in Canada, and how I ended up in my current job and it was all a series of coincidental decisions.

“I have a story about coincidental decisions.” he said. I listened. He told me that he used to carpool to work with his colleagues at a place he worked some years ago. This way they could travel in the carpool lane, and save the environment and generally just hang out on the way there, which he valued. They had become close friends over the years, and they lived a few minutes apart from each other. Generally, the guy who lived farthest away from work would always pick up the others in succession, so they ended up having fixed seats in the car. He would always ride shotgun. One morning, he woke up to find he had slept in, so he texted his friend that he would be a bit late and they could take off without him. He would just drive his own car to work.
As he was getting ready, he heard honking outside his house and found that the driver had gone to pick up number two first, then came back around to get him anyway. So he got in the back of the car, and they had some laughs about not sitting in their usual spots this morning, being all out of wack.

As they drove onto the highway, after picking up number three, the traffic was heavy as usual. They were creeping along, listening to rock music and talking about work as they always did. At one point, they were at a stand still under an overpass and traffic was not moving at all. They were going to be late for work, and they all jokingly blamed him for oversleeping. As they made quips back and forth, a sudden loud crack gave them a jolt and they scrambled to see what had happened. Had there been an accident? Seconds later, something crashed onto the front of the car and everything went black. He opened his eyes, but couldn’t see anything. He was stuck in place, his legs pinned down underneath something large and realised that half the car was no longer there. The entire front had been crushed down by whatever hit them, and his two friends were nowhere to be seen. He had to be cut out by firemen, and all he could think about was his alarm clock and coincidental decisions.

When the plane landed, he gave me his business card. I never got in touch with him, but I still think about him from time to time.