All Of Us: Strangers

The other day I was on a flight from Washington DC to Toronto. It was a puddle jumper of an airplane, but it had jets, so it was noisy as hell in the cabin and the seats were too close together.

A little girl was across the aisle from me, looking out the window, and she turned to me and asked me how long the flight was going to last.

And I didn't know if I should say anything.

Such are the times we live in today, where speaking to a lone child is not something to cherish (the child might learn something; for that matter, so might you). Rather, speaking to a child makes you look over your shoulder, to see if anyone thinks you're some sicko who's trying to take advantage of a young innocent.

Poor kid. I told her that the flight was about an hour long and that we would be there in no time. And I went back to my book.

"Do you live in Toronto?" she asked.

I looked at her and she wasn't smiling or frowning, she was just doing what kids have always done: saying what was on her mind. She hasn't learned how to bullshit beyond I-didn't-hit-him in the playground. She wasn't making small talk. She just wanted to know if I lived in Toronto.

"No," I said. "But my family does. I'm there a lot." I couldn't help myself, so I said, "Where are you from?"

"New Orleans," she said.

"Cool," I said. Cool? Whatever. Back to the book.

The flight went on for a while and my mind was bouncing with questions. I never learned not to talk to strangers, and maybe this kid hadn't either. I wanted to asking how New Orleans was doing these days, and if she was there during Katrina. I wanted to ask her what she thought about all that, and if she'd been scared, or if she even remembered it.

"I'm Whitney," the kid said.

I already knew that, because it was hanging from her knapsack in the form of a plastic nametag, roughly the size of a credit card. It was the same knapsack that the plastic stewardess had rifled through. She was making sure the kid wasn't bringing fruit or meat across the border, lest the customs officials put the kid against the wall and arrest her for an agriculture infraction.

"I'm Sean," I said. And, not knowing any better, "Do you have family in Toronto?"

She smiled. "Yes," she said, "My cousins live there. I go every summer for two weeks."

Every summer. To a kid, that must sound like a lot.

"How old are you?" I said. And I looked around, trying to see if anyone thought I was some lecherous bastard.

"Nine," she said.

So every summer for maybe the past two summers, her family has put her on a plane to see her extended family in another country, and little Whitney thinks two summers is 'every summer.' Which I thought was the best news I'd heard in ages. Nowadays there's a virtual traffic jam in front of the elementary schools, or even high schools, because parents won't let their offspring walk five feet without them, nevermind sending them 2000 miles to a different city. But maybe after Katrina, the parents of New Orleans are thinking, "Screw it. Let the kid live a little."

The flight continued. It crossed my mind to ask Whitney if the stews were going to make sure she got to the customs terminal all right, or if she wanted me to show her there myself. And I thought, what a crazy question. You simply do not accompany children anywhere today. If you look cross-eyed at a kid in a restaurant to make them laugh, the mother will cluck her tongue and turn the kid around.

I wonder how many lost children are completely ignored on streetcorners and in malls because people are afraid to touch them? To help them? I bet it's a lot. Help a kid find their mother in a mall parking lot and they'll have an Amber Alert on CNN with your face plastered to it in no time.

We started our descent. The kid pointed out the window and asked me, "Is that Toronto?"

I wanted to say, "You come here every year, shouldn't you know?" but I decided to cool the smartass stuff. So I pointed out the window and showed her the CN Tower ("I've been there," she said), Rogers Centre ("I saw a game there," she said) and Lake Ontario, to which the kid said nothing, reminding me that kids couldn't care less about geography.

The flight landed. I pulled out the customs card and then reached into my pocket. Damnit. I searched in my bag. Damnit. I looked to the kid.

"You got a pen?" I asked.

She did. More responsible than me. More helpful than me, too.

When the plane got to the jetway, I stood up and told the kid to have a nice time with her cousins. She smiled from ear to ear, and it was a great smile. Then I left her standing there in the aisle, without once asking if she was going to be all right, or making sure that the stews hadn't forgotten her. I still feel bad about that.

The modern world is beating us down slowly but surely. No vices, no passions, no joys, no humanity. Making us into insular automatons, where the environment in Brazil is worth more than a human anywhere. Mind your business, and for God's sake don't reach out to anyone. Why, just this month in Kansas, a store video showed people walking over a woman who'd been stabbed. She was lying on her stomach and no one asked her if she was all right. They just walked over her and into the store to buy their beer, Coca-Cola, and tampons. And she bled to death.

I don't like kids. I don't get along with them very well. But I miss them sometimes.