Mad Albanian Airborne

I sat next to a crazy person on a plane. The man appeared to be from the Albania end of Europe, alternately raving, mumbling, arguing, lecturing and singing foreign melodies to himself. His hands fidgeted, fumbled with a cigarette carton, played with the latch on the fold-out tray and otherwise went through the motions preceding a full nervous breakdown. One of the few garbled words emerging from his heavily accented incoherence (I call it Schizoslavian) was "terrorists," a bad sign. Sitting next to a crazy person without inadvertently contributing to his craziness takes a careful balance. On the one hand, making eye contact or exchanging pleasantries with him is liable to encourage his mania. On the other, acting visibly perturbed or affected by his presence could offend him, and an offended crazy person is a crazy person liable to take crazy measures to challenge your notion of him being crazy.

So studiously ignoring him in a nonchalant manner seemed the best approach. Still, I was annoyed. A quote from Albert Camus came to mind: "Nobody realizes that some people expend a tremendous amount of energy merely to be normal." I expend that energy. I have an internal dialog with myself, I feel the urge to sing to myself, I feel like fidgeting wildly a times: but I restrain myself. I engage in calming thoughts to loosen my nerves. I catch myself when my hands are doing weird things. I promise myself I won't blow my top: I make that sacrifice for the sake of civil society. So why can't he? I realize there's a difference between being eccentric and schizophrenic, and we likely fall on different sides of that divide: but still, that's what I thought to myself. It's not that I felt better than him because he was crazy and I'm not; I felt better than him because his craziness was undisciplined while I could at least restrain mine on an airplane.

I don't know this potential-Albanian's life story. Maybe his entire village was raped and pillaged in front of him, earning him a refugee status in Canada that gave him material comfort but none for his mind. Maybe he was a boy-genius headed toward a career in neurosurgery in Bratislava until he began experiencing signs of schizophrenia at age 16, causing his parents to send him away to be raised by nuns. Maybe these nuns had just sent him away for the first time on an airplane, to find a new life in a distant province. All I can say for sure is that he had no people or even bags with him, and no one waiting for him at the airport. He took a cab and disappeared into the city.