AwkwardRule #9: Airplane Conversations
The situation - You’re boarding your flight and as you walk down the aisle and find your seat, you see that you’re next to a kindly old lady who smiles at you warmly. This warm smile is the death of your hopes of reading your novel.
Inevitably, at some point, she’ll lean over and say, “my (son or daughter) is about your age” and you’ll be pulled into a conversation. Nobody has been able to demonstrate a way to politely/nicely respond to that statement without engaging in at least a little conversation - many great minds throughout history have tried*.
- Figure 9.1 - An adorable grandma flashing her warm “I want to talk to you smile”. It has been shown that this smile is equivalent to “There’s no chance you will read your novel!” on flights. Photo from:
Sometimes you might actually want to talk to the person next to you. Airplane conversations might actually be interesting. The real problem though, however, is once you’re in an airplane conversation, how do you end it?
You can’t fake a phone call, you don’t have anywhere to be except your seat, and you’re not free to just roam around. You can try to avoid talking altogether, but sometimes you can’t avoid it. And what if you want to talk to the other person, but just not for the whole 5 hours? Unfortunately you can’t just say, “well this has been a great conversation, I’m going to read my book now.”
This problem is addressed by ->
This rule covers verbal interaction between a person and their immediate neighbors on an airplane. Follow these guidelines:
1. Create a conversational escape route - While it’s often hard to end a conversation abruptly on a plane, you can lay the groundwork early on. As you start talking, try one of the following
- If you want to sleep: “I was running all around <insert city you’re flying from> and I only got 3 hours of sleep the whole time, so I might nod off all of a sudden!”
- If you want to just read your novel: “I’ve been working really hard on my <insert subject kind of related to novel you’re reading> paper and it’s due tomorrow. I might actually have to work through this flight, what a pain!”
- If you want to just sit in silence: “Have you heard of this new form of meditation where you look straight ahead and maintain silence for long periods of time? It’s called <insert random Indian name> meditation and it really calms me down on flights. I might try it today.”
2. Use a well-timed bathroom visit
People often make the mistake of trying to stop an airplane conversation by interupting and saying, “sorry, I’ve got to go to the bathroom”. Unfortunately, when they get back to their seat, their neighbor can easily continue with “so as I was saying ..” What you need to do is wait until there is some sort of lull in the conversation and then head to the bathroom. When you get back, immediately start reading your novel or get into “sleep mode”. Your neighbor will have no conversational entry point to start back up again.
3. Dealing with attractive people
A lot of people hope for the hot girl/guy to sit next to them, but they don’t realize that while this can often be awesome, it can also go horribly wrong. Remember that time you hit on that cute person at the bar, and it didn’t work out so you were able to walk away? Well, it’s like that, but if things go badly there is nowhere to go. But there’s a way around this problem - using one of the conversational escape routes from #1. If you create a good escape route, if your attempt at flirting goes badly you can escape into your novel or into your (possibly magical) dreams.
Any suggestions for amendments / changes to this rule? Email awkwardrules@gmail.com.
* Little known fact - René Descartes fruitlessly contemplated how to escape this exact situation with the kindly old women that sat next to him on long horse-drawn carraige rides. He went insane and had to start over mentally with a clean slate and “I think therefore I am”.
