The Mysterious One Armed Woman

It was a long day of flying from Seattle to Cincinnati then on to Atlanta. The flights were both oversold and the planes were packed. Holland America had booked our flights and didn't book them together so Julie and I had to sit on the same isle but not next to each other, she was on one side of the plane and I was on the other.

As I approached my assigned seat I noticed a woman in a strange litte hat, she look up and asked if the one next to her was my seat, it was. I immediatly became aware that she had built her own little nest already with books, magazines, some other gadegts that I didn't recognize, her cane and some pillows. There was no way for me to get into my seat without her standing up and as she did so, I discovered that she only had one arm.

Sitting on the other side of me next to the window was a young man with his cap pulled down low, a coat wrapped around him and he was already sound asleep.

I slid in and buckled up knowing that this was gonna be a strange ride. As we pushed back from the terminal, the mysterious one armed woman began tearing pages out of one of the magazines and stuffing them into the pockets of her jacket. At that point I decided it was probably a good time to go to sleep, I crossed my arms over my chest and shut my eyes.

My throat began to sting a little and I realized that I had been sitting there asleep for quite a while with my mouth wide open. I peeped out of my right eye and saw the mysterious one armed woman digging through one of her bags and knew right away that I didn't want to get into a conversation so I better go back to sleep, I somehow knew that it was better to sit with my mouth open than answer a lot of her questions.

A couple of hours later, I opened my left eye just in time to see the young man sitting on my left jump over me on his way to the restroom. The mysterious one armed woman stood in the isle the entire time he was gone and stared at me, I would open my eyes just enough to see her but not enough to let her know that I was awake. He finally returned to his seat and began spitting into a drink bottle, he had put some dip in his mouth and I was just hoping that he had been doing this long enough so that it wouldn't make him sick.

The last 30 minutes of the flight got pretty rough but I managed to keep my eyes closed until we finally were on the ground. As we taxied up to the terminal and came to a stop, the mysterious one armed woman stood up, looked me straight in the eye and said "you're the best plane sleeper that I have ever seen, how do you do it?" I told her that chocolate puts me to sleep, the last time that I saw her, she was at the news stand buying a pack of M and M's.