Drama over the Atlantic - I don't even have to make this stuff up!

This morning I was flying over the Atlantic Ocean. The dinner service had finished 30 minutes earlier and the inflight movie, Nacho Libre, wasn't even an option for me. I was tired and I was lucky that the seat next to me was empty so I spread out, if you can call curling in an uncomfortable foetal position with a seat belt digging into my back spreading out. It worked though because I must have fallen asleep because I was awakened to the fact that I was being crushed!

Let me repeat that ... I was awakened to the fact, not the sensation, that I was being crushed under the weight of something. My first thought was that the kid in the back had broken the chair on which my head was resting and was pushing the back seat forward, sandwiching my head between the seat and the back of the chair. I was actually getting a visual of this in the seconds where I was struggling to get this weight off of my head!!! Imagine my surprise, after I was able to get my head and shoulders into an upright position, that the weight was that of an old man!!!

Apparently, an old (Irish) man collapsed into my seats while he was walking through the cabin of the plane. The scary thing is that I couldn't wake him! I got out from under him and he slumped onto me again. So here I am with an old man slumped across my torso, rapidly losing all signs of life in his body. I am trying to shake him into consciousness while trying to free my arms (still semi-pinned) to alert the stewardess. I got my left arm free and I got some help. Both she and I were able to sit him upright in the aisle seat chair next to me, both of us frantically shaking the man whom we both thought was dying. Neither of us said it but I saw it in her face and she must have seen it in mine. She was taking his pulse when he spoke! He said, "feel weak" and then his head went back, his eyes snapped open and his pupils dilated. At this point, I thought, "ok, this is it, we can't do anything about this" then my second thought was "shit, am I going to have to sit with a corpse" - I am not proud of that last thought but I really did have it. Ok, I have something for confession.

By this time, I have the entire cabin crew surrounding my seat. Funny enough, no one else on the plane seems to notice. For any of you who have taken a red eye, the after dinner/movie time is the time that is the quietest and most people try to sleep. I think they drug the air so that they aren't bothered for a large portion of the flight. Anyway, they haul out the oxygen, strap it on this poor guy who is still staring with dead eyes at the reading light above the chairs. He is still the color of wallpaper paste. The oxygen and the shaking by myself and the flight attendant, seems to reignite the pilot light and this guy gradually starts to get a little color back into his flesh. His eyes blink and I think he is surprised that the light he was looking at was, in fact, only my reading light on a 747 or whatever we were on - I am no aviation expert - instead of the "Vacancy" sign at the pearly gates.

So he repeats his original mantra "I feel week", takes a few breaths and then starts talking! Through the oxygen mask, the flow of air made this guy who was dead a couple of seconds before, very, very chatty. The entire, aforementioned cabin crew who are gathered around, and I hear about how he is sorry and embarrassed and how he is usually a very good traveller and it was just that he has been awake for so long, you see, he was visiting his daugher in Washington D.C. She took a job down there a couple of years ago and while her mother and himself missed her, they tried to see her as often as possible but it was becoming harder as air travel was becoming harder and they had to wait 3 hours before getting on a plane to New York .... you get the point. Poor guy. He asked me if I thought he was drunk, "no", I told him, "I thought it was your clever way to meet me". He liked that.

Oh, another funny thing about this entire situation, and hours later and after a few tellings, this situation is kinda funny, he says "maybe we shouldn't tell my wife. I don't want her to worry." This is such a typical Irish reaction to a troubling situation - God forbid you bother anyone with your problems! How was she not going to know when he returned to his seat with 45 flight attendants and a tank of Oxygen? I doubt he even goes to the doctor after all of this either.

Yet another one for the Pog book on Jet setting. Hey, but the flight attendant and I who shared the "moment" came over to me a few minutes before we were set to land and gave me two bottles of Champagne to thank me for being so calm, cool and understanding.

I will toast to this poor little old man's health with them.