Idyll Banter by Chris Bohjalian Page A

particularly rich in improvisational flair. Sometimes a good witch just needs her mom, and that’s A-OK, and sometimes the Munchkins will be more difficult to herd than a litter of kittens.
    And that’s OK, too. Because Oz is a pretty magical place to begin with, and it can only become more enchanting when peopled by actors little more than three feet tall.

IT’S NOT EASY TO BE A KID
    LAST MONTH I had the pleasure of serving as the company for an “unaccompanied minor” on a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Chicago. The minor was a ten-year-old boy on his way to catch up with his mom in Florida during his spring break from school, and we became pals soon after the flight attendant—a woman who had had her smile surgically removed at birth—pointed out his seat to him and commanded, “Read the safety card before we take off.”
    We bonded because I was willing to explain to him why Billy Bob Thornton was trying to blackmail Frances McDormand’s boss in
The Man Who Wasn’t There,
and he was willing to teach me how to draw the Pokémon character Pikachu.
    At first he had been mildly annoyed that the flight was showing a movie for grown-ups instead of one for children, but when I pointed out to him that he was the only child on the entire airplane, he saw the reasonableness of the airline’s decision to show a black-and-white Coen brothers film over
Jimmy Neutron.
    Personally, I would have been content to watch
Jimmy Neutron,
too, but then I will watch anything while inside an airplane. I’d watch a two-hour infomercial about nose hair trimmers if it took my mind off the fact that I was hurtling through space at 500 mph, and there was nothing between me and the earth but 35,000 feet of air.
    In any case, I liked this young man a lot, especially because he understood the cardinal rules of flying in the modern age: Wear sneakers and travel with lots of snacks. In his knapsack he had pretzels covered in chocolate and pretzels covered in yogurt, Tootsie Rolls, Chex Party Mix, juice boxes, and three Twinkies. He was also willing to share his cache with me, even though I could offer nothing in return but a couple of Altoids and the antibacterial hand gel with which we could wash our hands when we were done.
    Incidentally, the sneakers matter because there seems to be a dramatically decreased likelihood that you will have to take your shoes off at security if you are wearing a pair of Converse low-tops (my traveling sneaker of choice) than if you are wearing black leather wing tips. There is nothing worse than being caught with your shoes off when it is announced that your flight has been canceled and you need to return to the counter to book a new one.
    The boy had spiked his hair with gobs of gel so that it looked like Needles National Park, and he had brought with him a series of toy skateboards the size of disposable razors. We spent a few minutes on the flight rolling the skateboards back and forth on his tray table and he showed me how to make them flip. This gave us both enormous satisfaction because the gentleman in the seat before him had insisted on putting his seat back so that the headrest was practically in the boy’s lap, and every time we flipped a skateboard we jostled the guy’s seat. (We had politely asked this fellow to put his seat forward, but he said he liked to recline and suggested that the boy move to any of the empty seats on the plane if it disturbed him to have a view of a strange man’s balding scalp.)
    In Chicago I changed planes, but the boy was going to remain on board because the flight continued on to Tampa, his eventual destination. When we were parting I wished him well and he said—seemingly out of the blue—that he hadn’t seen his real father in almost two years.
    I nodded and wondered suddenly who had put him on the plane in Portland. Then I gave him my card.
    Sometimes, it’s very hard to be a kid.

THE THRILL, THE