Sleeping on Strangers

You know how when you wake up next to someone and you cannot recall their name? Yesterday that happened to me. I was sleeping upright and had been jerked awake by the back and forth rhythm of a train. As I picked my head up off the shoulder of the woman sitting next too me, I began to wonder: how long had I been asleep? Who was this person sitting beside me and, oh shit, I drooled all over her arm.

There are only so many places a person can hide on Amtrak so I was not quite sure where I could escape to and since there where only two people, me and her, in the two seat row, she would find out sooner or later that those were my bodily fluids on her red sweater. I had a few options: hope that the small lake I had spilled from my mouth onto her shoulder would dry within the time it took to ride from LA to Emeryville; find a bottle of water and accidentally spill it on her to cover up the offensive spot; or go back to sleep. So, I decided on the latter because, well, I was tired and a little drool never hurt anybody.

While riding long distance transport there are certain rules that get tossed out the bus, train or plain window because 12 hours on public transport will make you do weird things: like sleep on strangers.

I've frequently awoken on air plains to find my shoulder beneath the head of some sleepy traveler. It's not that we intentionally try to snuggle up with our neighbors, it's just that our heads roll around as we attempt to get whatever kind of sleep we can when returning home from a long vacation or preparing for an upcoming adventure in Amsterdam, Zanzibar or Buenos Aires. Whatever the destination might be, my fellow travelers and I may not know each other by name, but we, in our slumbersome states, often support each other with a little shoulder to sleep on, or in my case, to drool on.

Flying across county while tired is not always fun and snuggles. One time when returning to Oakland from Houston on Continental Aircrimes the lovely little people at Hobby booked a separate seat for my little sister who was four year old at the time. The flight was full and the stuarts instructed that we request that passengers switch seats to allow my little sister to sit next to me or my mother. Naturally grown adults would be willing to move seats to accommodate a preschooler, right?

Wrong. The man sitting next to me neglected to move because he wanted to sit next to his mother. This man who was, I don’t know, say about 40 years old. What a punk. The man sitting next to my mother said he didn’t want to move because he did not want to sit in a middle seat. So the good people at Continental Aircrimes made this girl sit by herself where she proceeded to cry for two hours straight until my neighbor’s mother knocked her son upside the head and finally he switched seats to let the freaked out little passenger be reunited with one of her family members. And what’s more, the man sitting next to my mother fell asleep on my mother’s shoulder. When the seat belt sign was turned off Alexis walked up the aisle to our mother’s section and woke up the big meanie sleeping in her place.