How important is seating on a commercial airline flight? Business types shoot hard and fast for first class, having grown accustomed to a life granted them by their acumen, success, or both. Sometimes though, I wonder about some of first class’s denizens – how did you get here? Look the type to be lounging and sipping a Martini or Mai-Thai you do not! Personally, I fly coach and shoot for the rear since it is safer to wait for all the impatient people to exit the aircraft. By the time they’re done jostling baggage and off to their next-oh-so-important destination, my walker is off the plane and I can continue on. In coach though it’s always the “window vs. aisle” debate and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was an aisle guy. What if you get stuck in the dreaded middle seat, sitting motionless amidst the neutral zone?
Welcome to the life of a guy named Matt Gesser, who – as hard as he tried to get a window seat – got stuck in the neutral zone on a Delta flight from Baltimore to Detroit, en-route to Tulsa, Oklahoma last week. Like a good Dad, Matt was trying to get home for the football scrimmage of one of his sons. A lover of both Jesus and Star Wars, it’s no surprise that he once helped with a church plant and that he works with Star Wars merchandise in his day job; the Imperial Crest tattoo on his arm is also a dead giveaway. A husband and father of three boys, he’s always looking for inspiring stories and real life examples to share with his sons, as the eldest of the triad wants to one day play in the National Football League and the middle son, Stone, loves drawing things from Star Wars and watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars with his dad. It’s while sitting in that aisle seat that I met Matt.
Don’t ask me how the conversation started, I can’t remember. I can tell you it covered everything from Jesus, Star Wars, and the connection between the Apostle Paul and The Terminator, to my story, the FENX Project, his work with Hasbro, how he moved across the country to help with a church plant, and what I hope to do once my job in Congress ends. We talked the whole flight, one thing to another, much like Lando and Wedge racing to escape the reaction which precipitated the destruction of the Death Star II. Towards the end of the conversation he assured me that one way or another this idea I have of traveling and speaking to share my journey with others would come to pass, and that he wanted to share my story with his sons to show them that “the impossible can become possible…” It felt a little bit like living an episode of Touch…again.
Probably the best airline conversation I’ve ever had; who knew the neutral zone would ever be so important, that even an airline seat had a destiny?
The Adventures of Aaron and the FENX 4.x 