Everyone can hear you and wants you to be quiet.

I’m waiting near the gate at the Hector International Airport in Fargo, N.D., when I notice a woman wearing a hat.
It’s hard not to notice her. Something about her draws your eye despite her appearance being unremarkable. She’s wearing dark leggings and a light denim button-up shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Her newsboy hat — think, that kind of floppy, misshapen kind with a very small bill — sits atop loosely quaffed dark brown hair. She’s not wearing much makeup or jewelry and while I wouldn’t personally wear her outfit, there’s an inexplicable cool aura about her.

She clearly knows the man standing near her. He’s got to be something like 35 or 38 while she’s much nearer to 21. The two are chatting amicably while the rest of us stand around looking miserable, waiting to board the plane.
I am one of the last to board. I’m in the isle seat behind her.
I’m next to a blonde woman who looks like she just left a colonoscopy and is on her way to Auschwitz. She does not engage, so I open my book.

The woman in the hat in front of me is still talking. Her seatmate has an actual garbage bag of snacks and candy she makes a show of getting from her carry-on and the two share some candy.
“I’m going to post it and say ‘I’ve got a few Twix up my sleeve!’ the girl in the hat says as she pushes a candy bar into her sleeve and carefully aims her phone at it.
She takes the Snapchat and the tired woman next to me rolls her eyes.
Candy Woman and Hat Girl converse the entire time the flight attendants give their presentation and well past takeoff. When Hat Girl goes to the bathroom, Candy Woman visibly sighs in relief.
“I wish I could sleep,” she says to no one in particular.
The man across the isle is the same one Hat Girl had been so amicable with in the airport and he suggests the woman just take the window seat because he’s sure Hat Girl won’t mind.
“She’ll probably talk my ear off, just like she did in the airport bar,” he says, smiling.
This transpires when Hat Girl returns, and from this point onward Hat Girl doesn’t stop speaking.

She’s from a small town.
She has two brothers, the oldest of which got a girl pregnant in high school. This, the believes is the reason her younger brother has such a drive to do well in life and has no time for misbehaving or partying, despite not getting very good grades in school.
She’s worried about the older brother, who relies on her and her mother to help take care of his child.
“But we will though,” she says. “We’ll always help him.”

The Man Across the Isle has a twinkle in his eye while she speaks despite the fact that he’s wearing a wedding band. I can’t tell whether it’s silver or gold, but I’ve stopped reading my book and just watch the two talk.
Well, Hat Girl does most of the talking.

“Will she ever stop?” the woman next to me suddenly comes to life about halfway through our flight. “I keep trying to sleep but every time I’m almost there her voice wakes me up.”
“She hasn’t stopped taking once yet,” I respond, smiling.
“Ughhhhhhhhhruhhhh,” she growls.

I become engrossed in my reading material as Hat Girl’s voice begins to sound less and less like words and more like the teacher from Charlie Brown.

“Wah wahh wah wah wahhhh wah,” she says. “Wah wah wahhhhh, wah wah wah.”

At this point it’s pretty clear that Man Across the Isle is wholeheartedly into this relationship with Hat Girl but is trying desperately to make sure the people surrounding him don’t think that. He knows the entire front half of the plane is sick of the exchange. Hat Girl does not.
He tells Hat Girl he has two daughters and she responds by offering unsolicited advice about how to raise them. Man Across the Isle brings up his wife by name.

As we descend, the sleepy woman next to me lets out another annoyed grunt and I laugh. Man Across the Isle looks back over his shoulder and notices me for the first time.
Actually it isn’t the first time, because Man Across the Isle went through airport security at the same time I did. We were in line next to each other, a fact he has forgotten entirely.

As we taxi to our gate, Man Across the Isle Turns on his phone. He has a text from a woman and responds with a quick note that he has landed in Denver.
He continues to talk with Hat Girl.
He looks at his phone again and without waiting for the woman to reply, types out a message that “she” was actually seated by him on the plan and they’ve been talking the entire time.
Hat Girl drones on while Wife responds with something to the effect of a sarcastic “poor you.”
Man Across the Isle responds with an explanation that Hat Girl, though he doesn’t call her that, is “like 20 hahaha” and “so annoying” because “I just wish I could have slept through that flight.”

This is totally untrue. I laugh but the people standing to get their bags don’t notice.

“Tell your daughters they’re awesome” Hat Girl says as she leaves the plane one person ahead of Man Across the Isle.

I laugh again.

Silver Linings, courtesy of Delta

She’s already sitting in the isle seat as I make eye contact with the gentleman sitting behind her.

‘Please get up so I can get into my seat,’ my eyes beg.

He obliges with a smile.

I halfheartedly attempt to make smalltalk but his body language leads me to believe he isn’t interested in having a conversation with a girl 20 years his junior, and I’m fine with that. He’s bald and wearing a wedding ring to match the body he gave up on about six months after his wife had their first baby. Or so it appears.

That’s when I look up through the crack between the navy blue airplane seats in front of me and really take a good look at her.

She’s pretty.

She isn’t wearing anything but foundation and a little mascara, but she’s got a naturally pretty face. Inviting. Warm.

Her hair is professionally dyed with hard-to-detect thin streaks of blonde and gold running through the naturally dark base. It’s probably a $140 dollar hair style, including the basic cut that frames her face.

I’m a little frazzled from my long weekend away from home and I lean back, sigh, and feel inadequate as she banters with the older gentleman to her left.

He’s almost entirely bald but clearly clinging to his virility and youth through the blondish strands of hair the perch around the crown of his head.

He’s wearing a ring; I see it as he struggles to stick his leather folder – the kind that only businessmen of a certain caliber have – into the setback pocket next to Skymall and the safety information card that will most likely never be read again.

We take off.

“I mean, Jesus was real,” I hear her tell him in a sure but not aggressive tone. “He was a real human being. There’s nobody debating that.”

‘That’s a little intense for airplane conversation,’ I think. Her long eyelashes reach out to the man, caressing the air as she blinks her wide pale blue eyes at him. I think I love her.

She’s flirting but she’s not even trying. He eats it up. I see the flight attendant roll his big metal cart into the isle.

She uses the word “antithesis” a lot.

After the flight attendant asks her what she wants to drink they transition seamlessly into a conversation about good wines.

“APOTHIC DARK!” she exclaims, squealing about how the special edition blend is “only 50 cents more than Apothic Red and it’s even better!”

The flight attendant, whose sexual orientation I can’t pinpoint, clearly loves her. This makes me jealous.

The man in the seat next to her buys her wine.

I order a vodka cranberry. I banter with the flight attendant, who seems to enjoy my sense of humor. His apparent approval makes me happy and I’m not sure why.

She goes from daintily sipping her vino from the tiny plastic airline to blatantly chugging like a trucker, which makes me simultaneously hate her and lover her.

“Oh you’re that kind of man,” she tells the wine-purchasing husband.

I think I can actually hear the happiness grow from within him. In my imagination, a couple hairs grow back on his balding head, but upon realizing he’s pushing age 55, laugh at his futile efforts to bag the girl and fall out again.

The guy next to me is named Dick. I know his last name too. He works in human resources, and I know this not because we have spoken any more, but because I’m a creep. Because he’s doing work on his computer and composing a bunch of emails, actually. I wonder what he thinks my profession is, as I’m reading a memoir with a tiny stuffed mouse on the front.

I mean, like, a stuffed and mounted mouse. Taxidermy.

She keeps saying “I try to be respectful” and I can’t hear the context of the conversation, which is annoying. I with I had another drink, but I’m even more upset that they raised drink prices from $7 to $8 at some point in the last two months.

I put in headphones when she loses her mind because she “KNOWS geography!” I don’t think I’m in love with her anymore. The first song keyed up when I hit ‘play’ on my iPod is “we’re going to die, it’s just a matter of time,” which is not something encouraging to hear on a plane.

I go to move stuff around on my tray and spill the three ice cubes left in my cup. Ok, four ice cubes. Actually, a handful of ice cubes and a couple teaspoons of water. There is water a lll over my leg but Dick – HR Guy – doesn’t notice because he works in HR. As he clicks through a spreadsheet on his laptop I wipe a little off the tray with my sleve, which some people might think is gross.

I’m trapped. I can’t put up my tray because there’s a half cup of water floating around on top of it like Flubber. I hate airplanes.

Wow. Dick is actually looking at some heavy stuff. There are about a dozen people who have 0 under the “net outstanding” category, which is highlighted in yellow on his Excel spreadsheet. I suppose it’s either a really good or really bad thing, as in “you’ve done zero things!”  or “you have an outstanding debt of zero!” – the latter of which would be better.

Nope. “Outstanding” is bad. Dick is emailing somebody about “Brian” and how he still has zero outstanding…things. POCs actually, but I don’t know what that stands for.

Come on Brian, get your shit together.

I see her lips moving but can’t hear what she’s saying because I haven’t taken my earbuds out.

I think I probably shouldn’t be memorizing what HR guy is looking at on his laptop but I have nothing else to look at. Besides, if it’s confidential, you probably shouldn’t look at it on a commercial airliner packed with people.

As we start to descend I keep trying to figure out who is using hand sanitizer or has a secret stash of vodka, because I totally want in on any vodka situation.

What is that smell?

Ah.

My crotch smells like vodka from my spilled drink, which is just now being taken by the disapproving flight attendant.
At least this should make it easy to make friends on my three-hour layover in Minneapolis.