The box of rocks

by tess

It was not my fault that the first thing I noticed was her chest. Admittedly there are times when I admire the stray breast here or there, but this really wasn’t a 15-year-old-boy-trapped-in-an-old-woman’s-body moment. I had boarded before her and was innocently reading my book taking care to avoid eye contact with the other passengers. I registered movement to my right and glanced over. And there they were – perky 19 year old boobs struggling with all their might to leap free from the confines of a strapless dress while she hurled her suitcase into the overhead bin. I admit that I was on their side, mentally encouraging their efforts and rooting for their liberation.

She sat down and retrieved her fuchsia cell phone but had trouble dialing it with her 2” neon pink nails. When CuteButUseless opened her mouth, I experienced one of those “Ahhh, of course. Now I know the rest of the story!” epiphanies. Her sweet little Kentucky accent chatted endlessly with Daaaaddy about any number of important issues. I learned that FaithAnne had never flown on a plane as large as the one she’d taken from Lexington to Atlanta. For some reason she had been forced to wear “my God-awful, white-trash-lookin’ shiny flipflops” (which matched both her phone and nails). She had purchased an $8 “saaaaaangwich” at the airport but couldn’t eat it because it contained an unknown offending herb in the mayonnaise. She thought perhaps we’d have movies since there were “four big TVs in the middle of the plane.” She reported to Daddy that there was a first class section, that it was in the front of the plane, and that they have nice seats up there. Strangely, this all seemed like big news to Daddy. She also indicated that she was “fixin’ ta call Maamaaaa” in an hour during her next “intermission.”

FaithAnne was one of those girls who likes to share her thoughts. She was cute and curvy and, I’m sure, quite the belle of the ball in the tiny town she comes from. She was traveling to Hawaii planning to spend the summer “and maybe more” with her ex-boyfriend who’s serving in the military. They broke up in October because he was to be stationed in Missouri and she didn’t want to live there. Now that Hawaii was in the picture, so was she.

For each and every leg of her trip from Lexington to Honolulu she had been assigned to a center seat. That fact alone would be enough to make me cancel the trip, but not chipper little FaithAnne. She confided that she’d been a cheerleader for six years. Yes, it did require every bit of strength I possessed to refrain from asking her if that’s how long it took her to graduate from high school.

An hour into the flight, she spent an inordinate amount of time reviewing her sheaf of boarding passes and referring to her PDA. Finally she asked if we would be arriving in Phoenix late because she was going to miss her connection. Our other seatmate (a reasonable woman from Atlanta holding her four month old daughter) helped me to explain 1) that on her tickets A stood for AM, not Atlantic, and P stood for PM, not Pacific, 2) that there’s a three hour time difference between Georgia and Arizona, and 3) that the departure and arrival times are time zone-adjusted so that an 11:00A departure from Atlanta and a 12:08P arrival in Phoenix is actually a four hour flight. Similarly the tickets for her flight to Honolulu would be time zone-adjusted. She was as wide-eyed with wonderment as the baby in the next seat.

As if an old fat lady and a woman holding a squirming baby for four hours cared, FaithAnne apologized to us for looking like hell. But she didn’t say hell. She was cute enough that she almost made the use of “H –E – double-hockey-sticks” something less than cringe-worthy. Almost. She had just purchased something called “Bare Minerals” which is, apparently, some sort of five-step make up solution that’s so complicated to apply it requires an instructional CD. Because “it had come up a bad cloud” in Lexington, the electricity was off when she’d left home that morning at 4:00. Therefore, she had neither experimented with the make up nor had she watched the CD. All of this to explain that she was carrying $80 worth of make up that she had no idea how to wear but couldn’t possibly consider greeting her ex-boyfriend “lookin’ like a dawg beat with an uugly stick.”

FaithAnne revealed that “it’s jes’ askin’ fer trouble” to serve alcohol on a plane. I’m guessing she must be a hella-mean drunk to believe that terrorism stems from Mile High Mojitos. On the other hand, she smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and wants to quit but back home everyone smokes. And since tobacco is Kentucky’s cash crop, she just can’t help herself. Our seatmate and I responded with the “Ahhh” sound which is universally meant to impart the understanding of, but not agreement to, something thoroughly incomprehensible. When FaithAnne excused herself to use the restroom, I (jokingly) advised her against smoking in the bathroom. She very earnestly told me that she “surely wouldna do that.” I felt like an idiot.

As we deplaned I wished FaithAnne luck with her trip. She ducked into the smoking lounge to finally dampen the nic fit she’d been suffering for the past four hours. Minutes later as I trudged through the terminal lugging my overweight carry on bag and sweating through my mom-jeans, FaithAnne raced past me on the back of a golf cart waving to her subjects like the prom queen she most truly was and ever will be. I’m not sure she needs luck (or intelligence). She’s got the world by the tail as it is. At least for now.