Encounter
Encounter
As I got on, my foreign-made sneakers shuffled through a curved hallway that led into the first class section, cluttered with people anxious to get to their coach seats so that they, in turn, may halt the traffic of bored passengers with the storing of their luggage. There was this man in his fifties, I�d say, who just sort of stared at me from the front first-class aisle seat.
I met his eyes because I noticed his gaze, but his focus didn�t wander off immediately, as one may expect. I saw now this soft-hearted and troublesome look on his face; his mouth seemed sunken back a bit, and he wore his eyes widely under arched eyebrows. After probably half a second, synapses met, and neurons pulled his focal point to some part of the cabinet siding, his thoughts still tackling some idea, foreign to my knowledge.
I couldn�t let that go: just another slightly awkward moment between two strangers who let their socially�conditioned behaviors dominate their actions. It had happened an infinite number of times too many. So I stared back, now leaning against the entrance hall wall. It wasn�t a glare, obviously, because that would only make things more awkward, and he�d be sitting next to me for at least another 10 seconds because the traffic speed was a bout a yard a minute, the line of erect passengers poking deeper towards the back of the plane, all the while pushing into the blue-grey seats on both sides. I gave him a little smirk and a raise of eyebrows, pushing them together slightly towards the middle of my forehead to imitate the irony of the situation.
As his focus fell again on me, my movements abducted my hand, enticing it into an awkward wave. For a moment, I thought my hand, in turn, may have abducted him from the topic of his thought. My greeting, taking him by surprise, concluded with a muddy �hullo� and a weak smile. Keeping his murky expression, he responded simply with a bored �hi.�
Just then, some passengers deep in the narrow aisle must�ve seeped into their seats, clearing space for advancement, and I took two steps past row one of first class.