Push Forward

Want to know something cool, that 90% of you wont believe?

Someone mentioned PostSecret, and it reminded me of something that I generally don’t tell people, because as I said, most wont believe it.

But a long time ago, my mother and my grandmother and I were flying home from the Bahamas. Before we got on this plane, I grabbed a quick bite to eat at a Chinese restaurant, and there was a flight attendant kind of…watching me. Not creepily, just, it was obvious that he’d noticed me.

Regardless, when we boarded the plane, it was very empty, so we pretty much got to sit wherever we wanted. I sat up a ways from my mother and grandmother, and saw that the very same flight attendant from the Chinese place was our flight attendant.

He walked over to me, and goes, “Hey, Chopsticks,” and I laughed, and he told me he was watching me because he was amazed at how well I knew how to use them. He called me that for the entirety of the flight, and even though he was like 30 something and I was 12 something, I’m sure we became friends.

He talked to me about a lot of things, and started talking about how he never really wanted to be a flight attendant. He had dreams and aspirations, but this job was comfortable, and that’s what he wanted to do.

Well, rewind a bit further—my cousin Jensen and I are very close, though he lives in Wisconsin, and I live in Kentucky. As a result, whenever we are together, we make memories that last, and one thing we did was write notes for people to find—waitresses, movie theatre attendants…cab drivers, etc. Anything from something funny to something meaningful, we would write whatever came to mind.

So just before we got off the plane, as we’re taxiing in, I ripped out a scrap piece of paper and wrote a note for him on it. I was a little kid and didn’t really understand how flight attendants worked, so I thought he’d have to change out the magazines or do something with them before he left, and so I put my note into the page of the magazine before me.

Last year, my friend Erin and I came across a Post Secret book, and as we were going through it, we came to a page that gave me very, very cold chills.

I wrote that note.

Believe me or don’t. I just thought I’d share.