"What is our 'together'?"

Fat Tomato Summer 007: Airplane Parable/Poetry Break/Strawberry Salad

Saturday evening, after hugging Emily goodbye, after my flight out of Greensboro had been delayed twice, after realizing I’d already missed my connection (the last one of the day,) my phone pinged with two simultaneous texts from dear friends, telling me about the shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania.

Three minutes later, 88 humans of all varieties, skin tones, languages, Enneagrams, religions, Taco Bell orders, and political affiliations buckled ourselves into a metal tube that hurtled us into the cosmos. It was a low-budget flight. For example, when the flight attendant displayed two snacks to the person seated in front of me - one salty, one sweet - I watched as he attempted to take both. Only after a brief, smiling exchange I could not hear, did he settle for the chocolate-shellacked quinoa puck.¹ There may have been ways to tap into in-flight WiFi, but I’m not the one to ask. All I know is that no one, to my knowledge, was talking about the former President’s ear, at least for the next two hours and 14 minutes.

When the plane landed something astonishing happened. Though half of us had missed connections and resigned ourselves to disappointing Plan Bs, the other half still had a fighting chance. (Narrator: There would be running involved.) The middle-aged, big-blond-haired flight attendant, she of the “one snack only, please” policy, she of whom I, being in full command of the data, most definitely made some snap assumptions; she, our fearless sky guide, picked up the 1980’s land-line located at the front of the plane, and admonished the rest of us to stay seated for the sake of our flight neighbors’ success.

Reader, we did.

I watched as Mr. Snacky Pants, who just so happened to emit pungent Republican vibes, stood with a smile and hollered, “This guy has a flight to catch! Run!” His row-mate, who happened to be a young Black man, hustled up the aisle as Snacks himself settled back into his seat with a sigh. “Welp, I did my best!”

We sat and waited, sat and waited, while anxious travelers heaved roller bags from the eaves and scurried off. A team effort in the human Olympics.

Listen, there is no world where any of this makes one stitch of a difference in the macro sense. Flight UA 4776 didn’t solve political dystopia. Or racism. Or gun violence. It didn’t change the fact that the people who taught me about character now revel in its vacuum. It didn’t quiet the alarm bells clanging within.

It’s important not to read too much into the thin veneer of common decency.

It’s also important not to ignore it.

Pre-school skills like listening quietly, passing the scissors with the blade pointed toward ourselves, and sharing our grapes can’t promise us a future free of despots. We are past the point of putting JD Vance in recess time-out. The Project 2025² handbook is no story-hour fare.

But I am convinced that if we keep connecting the tiny pin-dots between us, tracing over them again and again, a better picture of what it means to be “together” might emerge. At the very least, we might be a tad less inclined to rend our garments in these mean streets.

This might sound naive. Maybe I seem out of touch. Nothing grates me, as you probably know, quite like a Pollyanna in a minefield. This isn’t that. This is sturdier, chewier, more sustaining for the long haul. An airplane parable, if you will.

Things I’m not suggesting: