Runway: the Finnair blog

 
“I can’t’,” I replied to an Indian colleague, who asked me to a Bollywood dance class he was giving. My friend smiled and said: “It’s all in the mind!” What? A mental problem, if my hips won’t move? Had I now revealed something about myself? To disguise my problems, I headed off to the class and danced Bollywood style with a folk dance–polka–tango mix. So it goes.

Then I happened to read an interview with a professional dancer, who said that he could determine much about a person’s character by the way they walked. I straightened myself up and made my way, with practised nonchalance, to a book shop, where I purchased Henrik Fexeus’ book “The Art of Mind Reading”.

But whose thoughts would I read? My family would serve as guinea pigs. It’s true that without the book I would still have guessed that it’s pretty much a lie (a whopper actually) when a teenage boy heads out for the evening with a backpack and answers the question “What’s in the pack?” with a broad smile: “It’s OK Mum! Just some lemonade for the boys!” The young man’s body language and expression, on the other hand, say otherwise. Or perhaps it’s simply because I haven’t seen him drink lemonade for years.

In the middle of the book, the writer wishes that the reader would turn back to the beginning. But wishes don’t always come true, and I read on. I was in such a hurry to make some mind-reading interpretations for my flights. How would turning back to the beginning of the book have helped? I’ve no idea, but I soon encountered some serious interpretation problems.

Conditions onboard aircraft impose tight restrictions on your body movements – when walking, for example. When entering and leaving an aircraft, you’re basically forced to queue, which leaves little scope for expansive, grand movements or expressions of individuality. During a flight, the slightest swing of the hips (Bollywood style) while walking down the aisle is soon blocked by the adjacent armrests. Then pain-inspired frowns are easy to interpret.

When I’m with a trolley on the aisle and there’s a passenger hopping up and down behind me, I’m pretty sure why they’re hopping, and it’s not aerobic exercise. When customers urgently need to pass the trolley, their facial expressions reflect their degree of urgency. For example, they may grind their teeth with lips open wide, accompanied by the hiss of inward breathing. Now that’s really urgent.

On the aisle I also encounter smiling faces. Although the body language is restrained by a seat belt, I see smiles extending all the way to the eyes. I don’t want to discover new interpretations for these. I want them to mean what they seem. They are encouraging. They mean good. They are important to me.

I imagine the smiles to communicate satisfaction. But not everyone smiles so sweetly. On one long-haul flight, on business class customer did not smile once during eight hours. OK, so she did look me in the eye when I served her. But a smile? No. I was pretty sure she was dissatisfied with our service.

Towards the end of the flight, she rang the call bell. I crept sheepishly toward her. The woman wanted me to know that this was the best flight ever! I broke into a smile. But she didn’t. I wondered whether in her case it was a similar kind of problem to me and my Bollywood dancing? All in the mind; that you can’t or won’t reveal too much.

Interpreting body language and reading thoughts are clearly best left to the professionals. Despite my great enthusiasm and interest in the subject, I still obtain the most reliable information from words.
 
Once, when I was serving food, a male passenger looked at the plate and said: “NO MEAT! NO CHICKEN!” Then after a moment’s pause, he continued: “I AM A  VEGETABLE!”
 
I would never have guessed.
 

Helena Kaartinen