Captain Nick

I was sitting at my gate in the Charlotte airport when I was approached by the worst person I’d ever met. He was tall and bit dumpy, wearing black horn rim glasses and a pressed white button up. I knew immediately that he would earn the Worst Human Being award because of where he sat, which was right next to me. I’m not typically so opposed to sitting next to others, but every seat at our gate was empty and we were two hours early for our flight. Really, you couldn’t sit anywhere else? Couldn’t even leave an empty seat between us?

He was a man, so certainly he understood the buffer rule. You know, the rule about urinals in public restrooms. For those of you unfamiliar, when you’re in a public restroom, under normal circumstances, men leave at least one urinal between themselves and the next man. This may lead to long lines and some OCD-style handwashing and tooth-checking while the fellas wait for the next acceptable spot to open up, but at least you’re not going to rub shoulders with someone or worry about them “looking” at you.

But no, this man—whose name was Nick— was unaware of the buffer rule, among many other social cues, as I would find out over the course of our evening together.  

Doing my best to look preoccupied, I sat with my left leg crossed over my right, my headphones in, and a my eyes intently focused on something out the window.

“Looks like ice” I heard him say.

I brought my eyes back to the front of my face and forced my shoulders down from my ears. What the hell looks like ice? I thought.

“I’m sorry…?” I shot.

Flipping his iPad around toward me, he showed me a map of the Indianapolis-area.

“Indy. Think we’re going to run into some ice. Might cause some trouble.”

He could sense my anxiety—which starts out most days as a low hum, but when I have to fly sounds like a one man band falling down a shopping mall escalator—and decided to elaborate on that word “trouble.”

“Well, you can see it up on this big screen” he said, pointing to a six foot tall monitor by the desk. “Ok, that green is good. Even the blue is fine. We just don’t want any purple.”

It was too late to duck out of this conversation and try my hand at the urinal (an unfortunate turn of phrase, I’m sorry), so I decided to lean in and play 20 Questions.

“Why can’t we fly in the purple? What happens if we do? How long will it take the purple to move? If I have to sleep in this airport, will you promise to sleep all the way in that tunnel over there?”

After answering my questions, I asked him how he knew so much about planes and ice.

“I’m a pilot.”

O sweet Jesus.

“Are you my pilot” I asked?

“No. I just finished some training so I’m flying back home tonight. I’m not on the crew.”

I felt good about his being a pilot and even better about him not being my pilot.

For the next hour, he explained weather patterns to me and how just about anything could cause an issue for the plane, although it ultimately wouldn’t matter because planes are resilient and pilots are experts. At first, his nightmare scenarios scared the hell out of me.

“If both engines fail, now that’s some shit. But, the engines don’t guide the plane, the wings do. So, we can land just fine even without engines. Ok, maybe not ‘fine’, but you probably won’t die.” He ended with a chortle that I was sure would be the last noise he made before I murdered him.

I restrained myself and was rewarded by the airline gods with another fun fact.

“Turbulence isn’t really dangerous. It’s more like a speed bump made of air. If we have a problem in the air, you won’t know about it until you’re in danger. So, if you see the masks come down, you need to…”

What had I done to deserve this punishment? Was I in Hell already? Had I died on the way to the airport and seamlessly stepped to the next world, some purgatory of panic-inducing factoids told by the world’s most bland, annoying asshole?

I caught myself drifting in and out of panic and reengaged with Captain Nick.

“…but the fire department would probably be able to get most of it out before the plane exploded.”

Great.

Heading toward the desk as my group number was called, I thanked the pilot for the game of 1,000 Ways to Die on The Plane You’re About to Board and picked up my bag. As much as I appreciated his insight and trivia, I was relieved that I would never have to see Captain Nick again.

 For the first time in my short history of flying, I had a seat where my long legs could fully stretch out. The person next to me was short, thin, and already sleeping with their hood pulled up over their headphones. Message received and appreciated. I was ready to focus on Monsters Inc. for the next 70 minutes, never having to think about being in a metal tube 30,000 feet above the ground.

All my relief and comfort was short lived.

Fumbling for my headphones, I felt a hand slap my shoulder. The body the hand was attached to sat down across the aisle from me—Captain Nick.

“Long time, no see, eh?”

Clever.

I chuckled and went back to my comfort movie, trying to give El Capitan the hint—if you talk to me about emergency plans for this plane, I will beat you to death with my seat, which can also be used as a flotation device.

He must have understood my chuckle because he turned his attention to the man next to him, whose nervous rocking and twitching made my shaking leg and heavy breathing look like a meditation practice.

Thirty minutes into our flight, just as everyone had settled in and the drink cart was being put away, I looked over to see Nick’s seatmate doubled over in agony, doing his best to soothe his worry as he listened to scenario after scenario of the worst things that could happen to a plane and how pilots would respond.

Nick was doing his best to comfort the man, but didn’t realize that the more he tried to comfort, the closer he pushed this man to laying down in the aisle of the airplane and vomiting

“There’s really no need to be nervous. We’re in the air now. You can’t control anything. If something awful happens, just listen to the flight attendants. If they’re incapacitated, listen to the pilots.”

The color ran from his neighbor’s face and into his shoes.

“Actually, we could lose an entire wing and the son of a bitch would probably just spin for a minute until the captain leveled us out.”

Holy shit, had I chosen the wrong three seconds to press pause.

Finally on the ground, Captain Nick’s seatmate gained nearly all the color back to his face and the strength in his knees.

The three of us made our way off the plane together—the seatmate breaking into what can only be called a walking sprint once we exited the jetway.

Nick nudged me as we both watched a Roadrunner cloud of dust form behind our friend’s feet. “Ya know, I hope he’s ok. He seemed kind of nervous on the plane.”