Air travel is a bizarre, floating society where hundreds of individuals are stuck inside a metal tube and have to trust each other to behave so they can all survive. Usually, everyone does. There is a rhythm to it: courteous nods, quiet lunches, and the shared knowledge that space is limited and patience is valuable. But every now and again, someone breaks the tacit agreement, and the fragile tranquility at thirty thousand feet begins to shake.
It started not long after takeoff, on a long flight over the Atlantic. My husband and I were ready for what we hoped would be a tranquil trip. He had his headphones on, I had a book, and I had my little calming rituals: peppermint gum, compression socks, and a small bottle of lavender essential oil that I always carried with me. The lights in the cabin went out, and the engines hummed. Just as I was starting to relax, I saw two bare feet on either side of my husband’s headrest.
At first, I assumed it was an accident, like a stretch that went too far. No one would ever use someone else’s seat as a footrest on purpose. But the feet stayed. They bent. They moved around. One heel started to tap slowly and rhythmically against the back of my husband’s chair, as if it were keeping time to some private music. He glanced back at me in disbelief, and I could only shrug because I didn’t know what to say in that moment.
I
I thought about what I could do. I could turn around and tell her directly, “Please move your feet.” But I knew myself too well. I would spend the rest of the journey going over the talk in my thoughts, wondering if I had been too harsh, too mild, or something else. I could call a flight attendant, but that seemed like too much, a bureaucratic escalation for a simple breach of decorum. I still couldn’t sit there and not say anything. That’s when my palm brushed against the small glass bottle in my luggage that held my lavender essential oil.
I usually used it to settle down when the cabin felt too small or the turbulence was too harsh. But as I held it, a notion came to me that was naughty, maybe a touch sneaky, but definitely satisfying. If words could cause trouble, maybe smell could speak for me.
The next time those feet moved forward, I quietly took the lid off the bottle. A light, floral wave of lavender floated through the air, gentle but strong in the recycled cabin air. I let it sit for a while, then put the bottle back down, keeping an eye on it. There was movement in a matter of seconds. The feet moved a little and then stopped.
I waited a minute. Then, when the toes came back, I did it again: I dropped oil on my scarf, let out a leisurely breath, and the invisible cloud went to work. It had an almost dramatic effect. She moved around in her chair. Her ankles bent, unsure. I thought she would be wondering if the smell came from a vent nearby or if the plane had suddenly chosen to smell like a spa.
She was wriggling by the third pass. She let out a quiet cough and glanced around. Her feet were gone completely. I waited five minutes to make sure. They never came back. I capped the bottle with a quiet sense of victory and relaxed back in my seat, feeling calm again.
My husband sighed in relief, completely ignorant of my lavender counterattack. He said, “I guess she finally got used to it.”
“Oh, I’m sure she did,” I responded with a weak smile.
The rest of the flight went off without a hitch. The engines’ hum went back to its relaxing cadence, the lights in the cabin gleamed softly, and I fell asleep and woke up again, surrounded in the subtle smell of victory and lavender.
When we got to the ground, the passengers slowly got off the plane, as they always do after a long flight. When we got into the aisle, I finally saw her—the woman behind us. Her hair was a little messy, and her face was wary. For a split second, we looked at each other. She looked confused, maybe even scared, like she still didn’t know what had occurred up there. I smiled at her politely, a tiny smile that could mean anything. She turned her head.
I put the small bottle back in my backpack. The glass felt chilly against my hand. That flight taught me something about being polite and maybe even about myself. Being polite isn’t always natural, and fighting doesn’t always solve what it wants to. Sometimes, serenity isn’t restored by force; it’s restored by a drop of lavender and a peaceful reluctance to become involved in someone else’s thoughtlessness.
I realized that the tiniest things can change the whole mood at thirty thousand feet, surrounded by strangers. For example, calm may be contagious, and sometimes the simplest techniques are the ones that make everyone feel better.
