“I was flying back from Vegas after an exhausting weekend of late-night work building out a data center facility, and I was glad to be heading home. It was one of those smaller planes with only 2 seats next to the aisle. I plop myself into my window seat, heave a big sigh of relief, and try to relax. A lady quietly sits down next to me. We exchange smiles. Pretty normal so far. No signs of cray-cray.
Then suddenly I hear a voice. A voice not of an adult, but the fake voice of someone trying to talk in a high pitch tone, the sort of sound you do when you’re telling a story to a child while pretending to be the Wicked Witch of the East. I look over at the lady, but she is not looking at me. No eye contact. I look at her hands. There is a puppet, and she’s talking to me THROUGH THE PUPPET. A few minutes go by of me talking to the puppet and glancing between the puppet and her, hoping for her to give eye contact and explain to me how she does puppet shows for a living or something. No such luck. She keeps going for 20 minutes with no end in sight.
At this point, I pretend to be really tired, tell the puppet, ‘Oh boy, I’m totally exhausted from work, gonna get some rest,’ and pretend to go to sleep. For the entire flight! I was not going to engage a puppet in dialogue to ask if I can get by to use the bathroom. At that point, I’d rather pee in my pants. I simply thought she was messing with me as part of some social experiment. I was expecting her camera crew to come out and tell me I was part of some hidden camera show.”
