Let's Talk Turkey

Let's Talk Turkey

Posted by Heather Harris

Wild Turkeys in Autumn

I flew to Austin last week for my cousin's wedding, without my husband or children. The ease of my travel was evident as  I watched a harried mother dragging an evil tempered three-year-old by the arm while her over-sized infant dangled precariously, screaming from a hastily snapped front pack. I pitied the parents I saw lined up criss-cross on the floor by the windows, trying to coax toddlers into eating vegetables from their salads while desperately attempting to distract them with the excitement of watching bags get loaded into the cargo hold of the slowly prepping airplane. I watched them, that is, from the nice pleather grown-up seats with my phone plugged in and my Kindle in hand like all of the other classy adults flying without kids. Ah, sweet solitude.

That is, until someone sits next to you on the plane and wants to talk. The parents, while tortured with the annoyances of traveling with children, are not subjected to stranger chit-chat. In fact, strangers avoid sitting next to children in much the same way they'd pass over the seat with a puddle in the middle of it. I watched it happen. On the other hand, I, a reasonably sane looking, smiling, small, quiet, neutral smelling, modestly clothed,white female, politely tucked into the seat by the window, am the first choice of everyone on a Southwest, choose-your- own-seat flight who have run out of empty rows to pick from. An Indian woman in a sari took the aisle seat.

I attempted to look busy and quickly picked up my Martha Stewart Living magazine. It was the Thanksgiving issue, my favorite! And right as I was blissfully engrossed in an article about raising heritage turkeys, ambling in my mind through one of Martha's dreamland farms, a Nigerian man wedged himself and his two bulging backpacks into the middle seat. On cue, the flight attendant announced that all of the overhead bins were full. And that's when I made the critical, "I don't want to talk to you" mistake: I offered the space under my seat for one of his bags. Game on.

What ensued was an hour and a half of ...pure delight! He was immensely interesting and entertaining. I had so many stories from our conversation, that during the weekend my family started to mimic me saying, "My Nigerian friend said..." The best part of the conversation was when he talked about gardening and raising animals in Nigeria. Apparently, like our community gardens in the U.S., they have community "ranches" where you can board your farm animals and have someone else take care of them.(Actually, I'm pretty sure that's what Martha does.)You can come and visit it or take it out for awhile, or eat it, whatever you need! Mark my words, that will be the next Portland trend. And then, unbelievably, he started talking about raising turkeys! I swear I did not in any way indicated that I had just been reading about them. He was talking so loudly and I was laughing so hard at his story about a turkey chasing a university chancellor, his dad's boss, around his fancy car that the woman in the sari told us to be quiet because she was trying to sleep. I've been told to be quiet one other time in my entire life. But that put an end to the conversation because, it turns out, we are both nice people.

Martha Stewart might have rare, heritage turkeys, tended by a staff of 20 poulterers, but this guy has stories! I will now be taking this entire episode as a sign that talking to strangers might really not be that bad, and that I must raise my own turkey for Thanksgiving next year, and the unlucky tom shall be called The Chancellor. Stay tuned...