Surprising Text Message

From: Sara
I'M SITTING NEXT TO AL GORE RIGHT NOW. he flies southwest??

my sister sara flew home to oakland on saturday and had to switch planes in nashville. as she boards the plane, she sees a man in an aisle seat that totally looks like al gore. she looks at the seat next to him and there is a huge stack of binders with labels on them like climate change. holy shit it IS al gore! she thinks to herself. thinking fast, she points at the window seat next to him and asks if she can sit there. he obliges and tells her she can put her bag on the middle seat.

sara then assumes that al gore is pimpin and has bought himself two seats on the plane (although still wondering why he is flying coach on southwest?). the flight is really starting to fill up. a young man asks if he can sit in the middle seat but then quickly changes his mind when he sees another seat free. sara then asks al gore, "Did you use your jedi mind trick on that guy?" al goes says, "What?" and she says, "Did you use your jedi mind trick on that guy? You know (waves her hand) You don't want to sit here." al gore chuckles and responds, "No, I *wish* I had jedi mind tricks!" unfortch the flight is really full and the very last girl that boards the plane sits in the middle. sara said that the girl slept with her head on the tray the entire time and didn't even seem to notice that she was sitting RIGHT next to al gore.

it is slowly after take-off that sara proceeds to shit herself. not really but you know what i mean. this is surprising coming from sara since i've seen her not only proposition jay from the infamous duo jay & silent bob but i've also witnessed her boldly trounce upon joey mcintyre and his security team to get a hug from the new kid. she kept trying to think of things she could possibly say to al gore but it all seemed trite and stupid to her. sara watched as al gore read the wall street journal, newsweek and then started reading some of his binders. she kept trying to look at his papers but only managed to see some sort of environmental policy outline that went all the way up to 2080.

they made some small talk as they were de-boarding the plane but sara still couldn't find anything substantial to talk to him about or come up with a reason to slip him her business card. a man on the flight that seemed to know him personally came up and started chatting with him and then another passenger said to him, "thank you for all that you do!" sara is still beating herself up over not "really" talking to him but i reminded her that the other passenger sounded like a douche so it's probably best she didn't say anything lame. the doors finally opened, two security agents came out of nowhere from the front of the plane and quickly whisked al away. that was the last she saw of him.

when sara related the story to my parents, my mother could just not fathom why al gore was flying southwest, "talk about a step down! the last plane he flew on was air force one!" i thought it had something to do with trying to keep his carbon footprint down but southwest doesn't seem to be any more energy efficient then any other airline. maybe it has something to do with the recession and he is just trying to save money like the rest of us...i mean thats why i fly southwest! sara also pointed out that a lot of airlines don't fly directly to oakland so that could be the reason as well.

no matter the reason, it was definitley the most exciting flight my sister has ever had!!!