We all like to feel useful

I am doing one of my quick Seattle trips and flew up this morning on, mercifully, not the crack of dawn flight but the one immediately after it.

I had a middle seat. The woman to my right, who had the window, was nondescript and mostly just sat there. There was an older gentleman to my right, on the aisle, who was traveling with his wife (I assume) who was seated on the other side of the aisle from him.

After the beverage service, the man put his napkins into the empty plastic cups and stacked them up, put his tray table into its upright locked position, and then just held the trash in his hands.

He sat there and held the trash. For kind of a long time.

Then, every so often, the wife would add another item to the pile of trash this fellow was holding: her empty coffee cup, then a crumpled napkin, then a gum wrapper added to the top of the pile like a cherry on a sundae. I couldn't really see her - all I could see was a ghostly hand floating into view, depositing used bits and pieces, and then floating off. The intervals between deposits were just long enough that you would start to think that it was done, and then more trash would float in from offstage left and be set just so onto the growing pile.

He continued to sit there and hold the trash.

Time passed. I took a short nap.

After a while, when I had woken up, he turned to me and said,

"Do you have any trash?"

Really?

"Um, yeah, I guess" I sputtered. I took my empty coffee cup and crumpled napkin from the seat pocket and added it to the pile.

He seemed pleased.

A solid ten minutes later the flight attendant came by with the garbage bag and he was relieved of his armload of airplane refuse.

I probably imagined it, but he almost looked disappointed.