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As many of you know, I fly fairly frequently. Further, I really enjoy flying, mostly because I like plugging in my headphones so that I can tune out the rest of the world going by. I like to watch a funny TV show, play the trivia game or listen to some music.
But what I love best, is watching a movie. Truth be told, watching a movie on an airplane is one of my favorite things to do. My headphones are noise cancelling and I have my own private screen with easily accessible volume and pause button controls. Plus, I never use the Wi-Fi on the plane, making me inaccessible on an 8-hour flight and, therefore, free to be totally present to enjoy the two or three movies I choose.
In the past, whenever I watched a movie on a plane, I would typically select an action or comedy, and NOT a drama, so that my fellow passengers wouldn’t see me cry. However, I discovered that a good comedy, sometimes, would make me laugh out loud, and nobody seemed to be bothered. But still, I stayed away from dramas because I am a movie crier (yes—I even cried at the theater during the last Harry Potter movie). Yet, as much as I can embrace crying in a crowded theater during the movie, I take comfort in knowing that everyone else in the theater is watching the same movie and I am, rarely, crying alone, like I would be, on a plane. But that all changed a few months ago when I decided to watch…The Whale
I was a captive audience of one in watching this movie and I could not stop my tears from flowing freely and often. I am quite sure that I went through my whole pocket of tissues as the depth of struggle the character portrayed in the movie was so intense and felt so real in my isolated and focused viewing, that the tears started early on and did not fully end even after the credits were rolling. What was even more interesting to me, however, was that my husband, sitting right next to me, didn’t seem to notice my constant crying. Further, upon walking to the bathroom after the movie ended, it appeared that my fellow passengers also didn’t seem to notice that I had just spent the past 90 minutes bawling my eyes out.
Dare I admit, as long as I had been quiet, no one seemed to really care about what I was doing in my seat, let alone how I was feeling. And then I realized…neither did I! As long as my fellow passengers are not causing a ruckus, I, too, don’t care what it is they do in their seat, and I certainly do not notice if they feel sad and cry. Upon returning to my seat after refreshing myself in the restroom, I realized that my movie genre options were now wide open. If I wanted to watch more dramas and, perhaps, be moved to tears, so be it! And that’s when I decided that airplanes needed to up their snack choices for passengers…
Popcorn! Popcorn!
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!
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