The Woods Are Just Trees

19 March 2018

Charlotte Douglas International Airport

(Please forgive any errors. I have slept very little and am typing this post out on a smartphone.)

I didn’t expect to have a story to tell already. Our flight was a red-eye. I would have settled right in to sleep, but I was nursing a blood clot on my leg and wanted to ask my neighbor to switch seats with me, because it’d be easier. 

Don’t worry about it, my seat neighbor said. Anytime you ask me to move it’ll be no problem. If I fall asleep, just slap me in the face. My friend here does it all the time.

An hour later, the conversation was still going. Seth is a Jewish college kid from Alpharetta, Georgia. Of course Jon and I had lived there. We talked about Lake Linnear, then on to other travels. 

I say “we”, but Jon and Seth moved from one story to the next so quickly all I could do was venture a fast question as one of them was taking a breath. 

What is FSU? Florida State University, in Tallahassee. What are the kids like there? asked Jon. There’s a whole range, depending on where they’re from. Rich corporate kids, weird kids, cool douche-y kids.

I gotta ask you, Jon said. Is there a safe space on the campus? 

Seth didn’t really know how to answer. He said if he doesn’t agree with what someone says, he just walks away from the conversation.

All the guys at FSU are on steroids, he said. They don’t think about 5, 10, 20 years from now. I’m not big, but I hold my own. I’m trained in Krav Maga.

Is that Israeli martial arts? I ask.

Yes, it’s pretty ruthless. The hardest thing I’ve ever done is get to level 3. And he told a story about Cozumel and going outside the “tourist fence.” The thugs didn’t believe he would be a match for them. Yet here he was, whole and in good health, telling me the story.

I take everything at face value. What reason do I have to doubt? I default to trust. Besides, Seth followed his story just a few minutes later with a description of a somewhat humiliating experience with snorkeling.

After awhile, Seth brought out a small object and asked if we would mind. “We all have our vices,” he said.

Is it an e-cig, I asked. Yes. Jon wanted to know if it gave off vapors. 

“Yes. Technically it’s a felony to use one in an airplane.” Maybe the question of vapors made Seth think twice. Or maybe he’d just had enough. He put it away and started looking for the flight attendant so he could buy a drink. 

A few hours later I opened my eyes and looked around. Seth was sleeping with his mouth open, baseball cap pulled sideways over his eyes. The flight attendant reminded me to put my seat up because we were about to land. I noticed Seth’s seat was also reclined. I pushed him gently, then progressively harder with no result. I was contemplating the possibility of slapping him in the face, but the flight attendant came in time and took care of it. He jerked awake, and in short order began to complain about a pain in his ears. 

How many drinks did he have, I asked Jon. One or two? 

More like eight, Jon said. He was hanging out with the flight attendants for a couple of hours.

I felt like I was already in the jungle. The woods? Those are just trees. It’s how we behave that lets us know whether we live in the jungle or in civilization.