Crazy Woman on A Plane...

We were still ascending, the bell hadn't gone off to indicate that we had reached 10,000 feet, and yet the lady in the row in front of me needed to move.  That she was sitting in the middle seat, that the seat belt sign was still on, that she might get yelled at by a flight attendant- none of this was as important as her need to move to the middle seat in the row opposite her.

Was she going to wait for the people sitting on the aisle to move?  Nope.  Was she just going to climb over them, hugging a purse and a shopping bag to her chest?  Yes.

She was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up and I overheard her saying that the fan was blowing on her.  She was apparently so cold her "skin was burning."

"Major crazy," I thought.  And then "So glad she didn't pick my row to climb into."

And that, ladies and gentleman, was where I made my mistake.  I tempted fate, tickled karma, stepped on the crack...whatever!!  About thirty minutes before we landed, she climbed out of the row she was in and over the guy who had the aisle seat RIGHT INTO THE SEAT NEXT TO ME.

And now the story gets truly tragic.

In a stream of consciousness that rivaled any I've ever been witness to, this is what I learned:
She recently lost her job working for an 82 year old lawyer and is now taking care of her elderly mother - but those elderly people, they're so hard to do anything for, so proud, so independent.  She worked for eighteen years straight to raise her daughter who apparently already graduated from college (is this possible? I wasn't given time to contemplate).  I must buy this sort of zipper thing that is used to clean out drains.  She didn't get any sleep last night because she spent the whole evening cleaning her daughter's new apartment, but why did she even bother?  It's probably already a disaster.  At three in the morning she had finally gotten that zipper thing down the shower drain and was pulling up wads and wads of black hair - OH MY GOD was she freaked out by it - they really should have a warning on the package - May Cause Heart Attack when you see what you pulled out of the drain.  Her Daughter's roommate has ADD and eats those noodle things that all the kids are eating, but opens it up over the sink and table, noodles go everywhere.

My smile was frozen, my brain blank, I might have drooled a little, but thankfully we landed.  She got up and thanked me for being such a wonderful seat mate.  I think I said all of four words - "Wow" "Eeuww" "Really?" and "Oh."

I may never recover.