Last week, I sat next to a lovely woman on a flight from Chicago to DC. I do not know her name, but I know where she lives (the city, at least) and what she does for a living (she is a nurse whose company contracts with the VA). Her daughter (whose age I also now know) is in nursing school and working at a veterinarian clinic to support herself, and has brought home numerous animals as temporary pets. I came to know all of this because I failed to don my noise-cancelling headphones at the beginning of the flight (the big bulky ones that nearly scream “anti-social; please leave me alone”).
Now, having said that, I must confess that I enjoyed our chat and found quite refreshing the opportunity to engage in the lost-art of striking up a conversation with a fellow passenger. But, if newly signaled Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards emerge as expected, you might be shackled to such opportunities – except that you might hear only one side of the conversation.