On my way back from Florida last month I had a layover in Nashville.
From Florida to Nashville, I was wearing a St. Louis Cardinals t-shirt and jeans and was treated like a normal person. Nobody was rude to me, but then again nobody was overly friendly.
When I got to Nashville's airport, it was kinda chilly in there so I put on a fleece pull-over.
Then I started noticing that people were looking at me differently than the way I'm normally looked at. It almost seemed like people were looking at me with... pity. A guy gave me his seat in the almost-full gate seating area. A lady called me "sweetheart" in the bathroom.
I chalked this different behavior up to being in Nashville and thinking, "Maybe people are just friendlier down here... this is so refreshing!" It wasn't until I got on the plane that I figured out what was really going on.
I was trying to put my rolling suitcase in the overhead bin above me when I started to drop it, like the jackass I am. An older gentleman in the row behind me jumped up to help me and together we wiggled the suitcase into the compartment.
"Thank you so much - I'm such a klutz", I said with a smile and a laugh.
"Not a problem at all - feel better", he said and patted me on the arm.
"Feel better?" I thought to myself. "The hell does that mean? I mean yeah, I'm weak and uncoordinated but that's hardly a disease. Is there something on my face? Does this guy think I'm hungover? Ugh now I have to sit here and try to decipher this for the next hour."
I took my window seat and started working on my book of crossword puzzles and then I finally put it all together. The fleece jacket I had on had this stitched onto it.
My ex-boyfriend's uncle was diagnosed with cancer last year a few weeks after we had started dating. I got to be pretty close with the family and became (a very small) part of his uncle's "support team". After the stem cell transplant took place, these fleeces were made for us to wear to show our support. This was back in April, so I didn't have a chance to wear it before it got too hot outside. I brought it to Florida to wear because the forecast said it was supposed to be rainy and chilly and it looked like a good shirt to cozy up in with glass of wine and a book. When I put it on in the airport it was the first time I had gotten to wear it, so I didn't really think about what was on it, and how it would be perceived. But while I was sitting on the plane, it dawned on me. People saw it and assumed that I was the stem cell transplant patient. And why wouldn't they? If I had seen this on someone, that's the same thing I would have assumed.
Though a somewhat bizarre experience, it did make me smile in the end. People were being nicer-than-normal to a person they thought was sick. Someday, maybe people will be this nice to everyone they meet.
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