Meet Sunshine

That's not her real name. I don't know what it is. She never introduced herself.

This story begins HOURS before I took this picture.

John loves his exit row. More leg room. On long flights, that's important stuff. (His knees start to cramp otherwise)

Our flight to Germany included a layover and plane change at JFK airport in New York.

During the first flight, from Phoenix to New York, we managed to snag the exit row at the last minute. Pure luck.

I sat by the window and John sat in the middle. Along came this flight attendant and sat down in the aisle seat. She wasn't working I guess, but still in her uniform. I think she would be pretty if she smiled, but I never got the chance to prove that theory.

John tried to make small talk, you know, say hi, be friendly, but she just gave him a dirty look, then shoved earplugs in her ears.

Whatever.

As soon as the announcement was made that you could put down your tray table, she pulled down hers, pulled a blanket over her head, laid her head on the table and that's how she spent he rest of the 5 hour flight.

Except when she was giving John really crusty looks after she bumped his arm.

At the end of the flight she left her earplugs in until the very last possible moment, (cause she was afraid we might try to engage her in small talk again?) then left the plane as quickly as possible, giving crusty looks to anyone slowing up the line. ("Move to the side!" where the only words I heard out of her mouth the whole trip)

At JFK we had some plane trouble, and instead of a 2 hour layover it was 4-5, so we had time to discuss our neighbor.

In all his flights, he had rarely come across someone like that. And never a flight attendant.

We agreed that naturally we didn't know her or her circumstances. Maybe she was just super tired and hadn't had her coffee yet. It was Sunday, so maybe she stayed out too late partying last night and was really hung over. Maybe she was mad at us that we were able to switch seats at the last minute and she didn't get the whole exit row to herself. Who knows?

And then we saw her. Of all the flights flying out of JFK that afternoon, apparently she was going to be working on ours. That's when she earned the nickname "Sunshine". We wondered if she would be able to pull off a fake smile while serving us peanuts.

As fate would have it, she ended up working in the first class section of the plane. (We were in coach, naturally)

That's when we decided what her problem was. She must have been irritated at having to sit in the same section as the rest of us riff-raff.

I snapped her picture as we exited the plane in Frankfurt.