Monthly Archives: April 2016

How not to make small talk with strangers: Weirdos Abroad part II

On our second day in Iceland, my friend and I decided to visit the local hot springs. In the hot tub, a woman came and sat near us.

“You look really familiar,” she told me.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“America,” she said. Well, yeah. I got that.

We did the whole where-are-you-from, where-did-you-go-to-school, etc., and found no hidden connection. “Were you on the trip to see the Northern Lights last night?” my friend asked. Yeah. That was it. The connection was from being in Iceland.

The woman, whom I will call Susie (mainly because I can’t actually remember her name), started telling us about her PhD program. She was a TA, she said. That was the last normal thing one would tell a stranger during small talk that came out of her mouth.

Susie proceeded to tell us that she hated everyone in her program, because they all hook up with each other and she’s too professional to get involved in that kind of debauchery. She launched into a long story about a man in her program who routinely teaches class drunk. One time, she said, he arrived so drunk that he began throwing up and eventually passed out after writhing in a pool of his own vomit in front of his class. Despite her efforts to get him fired, she said, he still works there.

Susie also informed us that her students routinely bring guns to class.

“As you do,” I said.

When we left the hot springs, my friend turned to me. “I feel like we can safely talk about what just happened now,” she said.

“I was trying not to make eye contact with you,” I told her. “That just happened.”

The only thing worse than crying babies on planes

I’ve been traveling a lot this month, and all these flights have reinforced a critical reality that I probably already knew: annoying people on planes are infinitely more annoying than annoying people elsewhere.

Yesterday, on my flight back from San Francisco, I boarded the plane and made my way to my aisle seat. There was a woman wearing pancake makeup sitting in the middle seat in my row, a fur stole hung over the back of her seat. Strangely, this didn’t immediately scream high maintenance to me.

As soon as I sat down, she remarked, “So I guess we’ll have to stand to let that person in,” gesturing to the window seat. I agreed with this hard-hitting analysis of our seating arrangement. “You know,” she continued, “I usually like the seat you’re in.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You want that seat?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

She sighed dramatically. “I’m going to be bothering you a lot to go to the bathroom.”

I was so excited for the six-hour flight.

When the food cart came around, she asked for the flight attendant’s opinion on the quinoa wrap. She held up a credit card. “I can’t find my other one.”

“This is fine,” the flight attendant said.

“I don’t know where I put my other one,” she said, rummaging around in her purse. “I can’t find it. Oh, here it is. I guess you can use that one if it’s too late.”

When the drink cart came by, she asked for a “Cabernet wine.”

“And I need a headset, too. I’ve already missed half the movie. And these grapes are rotted.”

Three “Cabernet wines” later, she knocked an empty bottle onto my bag. “These trays are too small,” she whined. She apologized profusely. Just kidding, she didn’t.

After observing our delightful seatmate craning her neck and sighing dramatically several times trying to get the flight attendants’ attention, the woman in the window seat told her about the call button overhead. She was charmed and inspired. The flight attendants, I imagine, were not.