This one time, on a long haul flight, I end up sitting next to a man probably twice my age, and we don’t talk for the entire flight.
It is only as we start our descent that we exchange a few words. I comment on the book he’s been reading, that I had almost bought it at the airport bookstore. “Good thing you didn’t,” he says, “it was nothing. Just a good way to kill a few hours.”
And then he adds: “But what did I expect? There are really only two original stories in Western literature, and all others are just variations on those two.”
Really?
“Yes, it’s the one about the man who sailed on the Mediterranean for forty years without finding his way home. And then there’s the other one about that nice Jewish boy who gets nailed to a cross.”
Now there’s a conversation I wish would have started earlier.
But by now we have already landed and we deplane and I loose sight of the man at baggage claim.
