LAX-AKL

I was trying to ignore the unsolicited and undirected whining from the large woman taking up half my seat. LA to Melbourne via Auckland is a long trip, but the only place you are going that is ten hours drive from Melbourne is the outback. She spewed stream of consciousness complaints about her life over the past year, in a strange mixed yankee-bogan accent. I’m not sure if she was trying to impress, or obtain sympathy. I learned she had a twenty-something son in the US. She had a daughter born last year that was with her husband, who she hated, in the outback. She had been in the US for months. She had been in hospital with swine flu, where she learned she was pregnant despite dropping fifty pounds. This woman was the stuff of tragic fiction or Australian comedy and I didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or run screaming. I tried to fake sleep while she laid out her plans to surprise the husband with the “happy” news before her fists started swinging. I tried not to let her feel we had forged a bond without being outright rude. But we all know how velcro-people work…