I was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, and was growing restless because I couldn’t seem to fall asleep despite my exhaustion.

The bearded, middle-aged man sitting next to me didn’t speak a word of English, and had spent the first four hours of the flight buried in his book of Sudoku puzzles.

My tossing and turning must have alerted him to my restlessness, and sensing that something was eating at me, something was on my mind, he put away his Sudoku book, pulled out a sheet of paper, and drew a tic-tac-toe grid.

He passed the grid my way.

We played tic-tac-toe, in silence, for ten minutes — long enough for me to get my mind off things, for me to stop worrying about work, about the future, about my ailing grandma, about friends that I was missing terribly. Stop worrying, at least, for the time being.

After ten minutes, he put away the sheets of paper, and I leaned back into deep slumber.

As we got off the plane and went our separate ways to our connecting flights, I nodded at him. He nodded back — an unspoken, wordless way of acknowledging my thanks.

(Photo by frozenchipmunk.)

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Unspoken.