49 on 13

49 People.

Just fifty less one people on a plane into a relatively nowhere city. When you say you're flying into New York City, Chicago, or San Francisco the response usually amounts to an excited "oooo!". But say you're flying to Buffalo and you get "oh". Oh, you must know someone there. Oh, you must have a darn good reason. Oh, now where is that?Is that in Wyoming?

Yet on that plane, in those 49 people who sat in seats and landed in flames, were a cantor, an activist for 911 families' rights, an activist who was among the first in this country to sound the alarm on Darfur, an aunt of one friend, & the colleagues of another. Just 49, like taking a metal scoop, dipping it into the giant well of humanity and look what you come up with. Probably there were more than a couple sinners on there, too, like people who might have been unfaithful to a spouse during their sojourn in New York City. Even the saintly among them might have lied to get out of an extra $20 charge at the hotel. "Internet? I didn't use no internet!" Sure, we know who all was on that flight, now. But did THEY know?

But it makes me pause, just to think of what kind of calibur was among just 49 humans flying around in one tin can. Of all those planes I've been on in the past year... who was on there with me? What were their stories? I remember the screaming babies, for sure, and the daffy-professor type who sat next to me coming back from London. But then, too, there was the skinny little man with his even skinnier and littler family, exhausted from having traveled all the way from Myanmar. They were refugees from the typhoon. He held out the large card hanging from a string around his neck to explain himself to me. I could only frown as my imagination filled in the gaps. I said "oh". I made sure he had lots of water and pillows. That was the flight back from... Atlanta? San Francisco? New York? Shit.

It gives me something to think about as I eyeball my fellow fliers for she who clearly brought on luggage too large to be a carry on and he who obviously ate beans for lunch before getting into the seat in front of me. Who are they all, really, beyond the normal sensory offenses which make convenient excuses for distance?