My flight back from Inle Lake made multiple stops. I was sitting in the front row, the exit row, for the first two stops. After we touched down at the second stop, the stewardess told me that I needed to move, that the next flight had reserved seats. So I got up and asked her where my seat was. She explained that I could sit anywhere but in the first two rows, “Reserved seats,” she repeated and pointed to the first two rows. So I sat in the second row and began to wonder. I wondered if the first two rows were reserved for the current flight attendants, or for other stewardesses transitioning between two cities; and then people started getting on the plane.
I watched as two women walked down the aisle and sat in the two seats in front of me. Two men followed behind them and sat in the seats opposite them. Two more men came, and one sat in the aisle seat, next to me; his friend sat in the aisle seat opposite. I spied the women immediately in front of me, to figure out why they got the seats and I didn’t. I saw: tennis bracelet, large diamond ring, frequent tossing of head full of well- groomed hair. I watched her friend flip through a fashion magazine. “First class,” I thought. “Rich.” I watched the stewardess interact with them, wondered if they were friends of theirs and were getting the insider’s deal or if they were high society and that the stewardess had to pander to them.
Then I looked at the two men across from them. I saw: old, dressed moderately, but carrying themselves as if things should be done for them. “Huh,” I thought. “They don’t look especially rich, but they’re kind of acting like it.” I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the guy across the aisle from me. He was wearing traditional clothing (the longhi, it’s similar to a sarong: a long piece of fabric wrapped around and tied at the waist) but also had jeweled things in both the collar and cuffs of his shirt. “Definite money man,” I thought, and wondered if he was the boyfriend of one of the women. During all of this, the man who initially sat next to me had gotten up, walked to the front of the plane, and opened the door that said “Staff only.” He looked inside, then sat down on the floor in front of it, facing the women and men in the first two rows, talking and laughing with them. After a while, the stewardess came up and they all laughed about what he was doing. Then he returned to his seat.
I noticed myself as he sat down. He gestured, to ask if it was okay to sit next to me, and when I normally would have smiled and said yes; instead I simply nodded, somewhat coldly, and picked up the in-flight magazine. “Well that’s interesting,” I thought. “I guess you’ve already decided some things about this guy, without having said a word to him.” And I had, I had decided that he (by his association with the people in front of me) was first class. And, to be honest, first class had taken my seat, was getting things that I wasn’t, thought themselves better than me. And then I noticed myself throughout the entire flight. I listened to hear if the “first class” people were getting drinks that I wasn’t, I watched to see if they were offered special newspapers or magazines, I checked to see if they were getting a different sandwich, not the “chicken bread” that I was served. They didn’t, everything was the same, but I don’t think that was the point.
For me the point was my immediate separation from these people. I immediately pulled away from them, refused to be friendly with them, began perceiving their behaviors within a story of you-are-first-class-I-am-not. It’s really not that big of a deal, I don’t think they especially wanted to interact or speak with me, I think they were focused on their flight or their next destination. But it was interesting for me to see both the reality of the situation and my reaction to it and how much of my reaction was created by my story that they were first class. For me it was a little sad, because the guy was being friendly, and I was being cold. Again, it’s not such a big thing, just something interesting to notice, how quickly I created separation, how it was entirely of my own doing, and how it kept me from meeting the guy next to me.
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