Bad sleepers don’t sleep better on an airplane, not even when they talk about a ‘night flight’ reassuringly. I therefore stretch my legs and to have a goal I walk to the toilet: I hang something in front of the closed door at an altitude of 10,000 meters, I know from the airplane booklet. On night flights you read everything you get your hands on. Then a boy of about nine years old approaches. He stops next to me and crosses his legs, this is the international sign of dire need. I ask him, and indicate that he may come before me. Very Dutch speaking, he confirms my first question, and then, without stuttering once:
“It’s also something these days, all those plane passengers who think they have to go to the toilet.”
A moment later he slips into the toilet and I am recovering from that worldly remark. Did he hear that from his mother? Is he highly socially gifted? The confusing part is that the boy himself is also part of the group he now detests. And the sentence didn’t sound like a ladle, a moment later I hear him ask the flight attendant in the pantry-with-curtains: “Madam, madam, could you maybe pour me a little water.”
I like all those plane passengers who want to drink water at will. I have a great soft spot for precocious little boys, who talk as if their young age is a heavy, unforeseen burden that they can only shed in conversation. Because you can talk old-fashioned.
What’s more: the boy formulates the tourist paradox here. Everyone, as an individual, couple or family, chooses a very specific destination and then we find ourselves in a fully loaded plane, as a result of those same, unique decisions.
Waiting for the toilet, waiting for water, and later: waiting at the airport for the suitcases.
Why do all those people go on holiday at the same time, and why do they have the idea that the return should also take place en masse?
Back in the Netherlands the same irritation: why do all those other cyclists have to ride through the city center at the same time at 5.30 pm?
‘Distribution of power, knowledge and income’ was once the idea of the Den Uyl cabinet in 1973. ‘Distribution of people’ seems to be a better solution at the moment. Asylum seekers, farmers, livestock farmers, festival goers, traffic jam drivers, cyclists: they all think they can go their own way.
And meanwhile you stand in another row, waiting and also biting yourself why the flow stops and everyone makes it so difficult for you.
Don’t bother me.
That’s why I still expect a lot from this young thinker.
Stephan Sanders writes a column here every Monday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 22, 2022