Put a stamp in my passport, I’m FOREIGN

I became a foreigner the moment I arrived at gate B20 at New York’s JFK. It hadn’t occurred to me when I bought the ticket to Zurich via Warsaw that the only people who take Polish Lot airlines are Polish.

The flight attendant came over the speaker in Polish asking a specific passenger to come up to the desk for an important message. There happens to be a Polish word that sounds a lot like my name…“Rashana” or something to that affect. The announcement was repeated several times over the next 20 minutes and I kept thinking, “Are they saying my name? Am I the idiot who isn’t going up there?” Each time heard it my neck would tense up for 10 seconds, and then I would let it go. No wonder I need a massage.
(Just a note: the first day of school a Turkish girl asked me if my name was Romanian or Polish.)

My last few minutes in the United States were spent admiring the lights of New York out the plane window with the Polish man sitting next to me, who offered me a mentos before take-off. My Polish seatmate was an elderly gentleman who spoke little English but whose genuineness crossed language barriers. He seemed to look after me throughout the 8.5 hour flight. He insisted that I use his pillow in addition to my own and gave me the front page of his newspaper to wipe up the grape juice I spilled when there were no napkins in sight. He woke me up when the drink cart came and even translated “beef or chicken” so I wouldn’t choose the wrong dinner. He was the one who made my flight pleasant in the middle of a foreign world.

(Ever noticed how the person you sit by can make or break your flight? There are times when all you want to do is sit in silence, but the person next to you insists on hearing your life story. Then there’s the person who doesn’t realize that the arm rests are a neutral area, and one’s arm should never be placed far enough that it touches the other person. My personal favorite was my seatmate on a flight from London to Chicago that drank Jack & Cokes starting at 8am and every half hour afterward until he began to wreak of alcohol and fell into a deep, snore-producing sleep.)