Part 6

Then another passenger smiled.The flight attendant finally understood what had happened.The woman had been repeatedly flipping her hair backward despite being asked to stop. The fifty-dollar bill had been sitting on the floor because she had dropped it while searching beneath the seat.The attendant returned the bill to her and asked her to keep her belongings within her own seating area.Then she looked at the blonde woman’s hair.“Would you please keep the extension in front of your seat for the rest of the flight?”The woman reluctantly gathered it and pulled it forward.For the next several hours, there wasn’t another strand of hair over my seat.I finished my lunch, reopened my book, and tried to forget the entire incident.But just before landing, the woman tapped my shoulder.I turned around.She looked embarrassed.“I owe you an apology,” she said.I nodded.“I shouldn’t have kept doing it after you asked me to stop.”I told her I appreciated the apology.

She glanced at the binder clip still attached to the extension.“Can I have that back?”I removed it and handed it to her.She laughed awkwardly.“I suppose I’ll remember this flight for a long time.”“So will I,” I said.When the plane landed, she walked away carrying her hair carefully in front of her.I watched her disappear into the terminal and smiled.I had never planned to embarrass anyone.I simply wanted to eat my lunch without someone’s hair hanging in it.Sometimes, the easiest way to deal with someone who refuses to respect a simple boundary is to let the situation speak for itself.And in this case, all it took was a tiny binder clip and a fifty-dollar bill.