Flying with Finger Sniffer and Other Misadventures

Misadventures are unavoidable. Really. Sometimes, no matter how much you plan, the trip doesn’t go as you expected. Life isn’t really an ongoing string of beautiful pics and having-the-best-time-evah posts.  It’s full of inconveniences, hardships, losses, even trauma: all of the things that rarely make it to our feeds.  Sometimes you’re in business class watching while the flight attendant makes your customized ice cream sundae. Sometimes you’re sitting next to a man that cannot stop putting his hand down his pants.

Ah….travel.

I’ve had my fair share of misadventures. To date, the most legitimately threatening one was being stranded on a desolate highway in New Mexico. A blizzard in Santa Fe over New Year’s Eve dumped a foot of snow overnight. “Why, that’s record snow out there!” meant that no planes, trains, or automobiles were supposed to leave. Seeing it more as a guideline, I pressed on. Thank goodness for Texas Aggies with big trucks because that rental car was not having it on its own.

Most were near-misses and inconveniences, many self-made. Childhood trips often involved an AC going out in August or the trunk lid not shutting in January (hypothermia for those in the back, heat stroke for those with the heaters in the front.) I’ve waited for a train multiple times, my personal record being one that was 7 hours late. On my last cruise we missed Belize because a man had a heart attack and we doubled back for the Caymans to get him help. Hubs contracted something resembling the plague when we were in Australia, missing the last day of wandering to a high fever. 

I do a lot of running in airports. We were going to miss our plane to NYC, so I ran, in my socks, to stop the gate attendant from shutting the door while my friends cleared security.  I left my purse on a plane so I ran through the airport. I left our passports on the plane at O’Hare, connecting to Ireland, so I ran through the airport. (Our honeymoon trip and Hubs was so thrilled to have married me at this point that he graciously offered to relieve me of the duties of holding the passports for the rest of our lives together.)

Yet NONE of these things has really come close to the emotional intensity I felt with Finger Sniffer.

Meeting Finger Sniffer

We had just settled in the plane, Frankfurt to Rome via Lufthansa. We had been spoiled with our first business class flight to Europe, and now the reality of coach and the last leg were left. As Hubs astutely pointed out, either Germans are very friendly, or there was a large group on board. It was 6 am but they all seemed to be immaculately dressed, greeting each other cheerily, and just glowing with excitement. As a woman in a hetero couple, I of course get the endless pleasure of sitting in the middle seat. Did I get to sit next to any of the smiling, dapper, hygienic passengers? I did not.

He was a slight man, with coke-bottle glasses and a large manila envelope stored in an enormous zip- lock bag. In that bag there were also at least 5 newspapers. He was wearing the standard uniform of the many men of Asian descent in airport business lounges: button down shirt with tapered sweatpants. He climbed over us, pulled out one of his many papers in many languages, put the paper two inches from his face and proceeded to enthusiastically pick his nose.

This situation is still redeemable.  Before we go much farther please know I’m a mental health therapist. I’ve worked in a residential center for youth and have seen and heard a lot of strange things. For the more blog-appropriate examples, I’ve been spit on and had poop thrown on me in retaliation by school-age children. I’m a bit desensitized. So I pull out my book and vaguely process take off. It was when he started to flick it onto the seat back in front of him, all the while reading his paper, that I couldn’t quit watching out of the side of my eye. Pick pick, flick flick. Gross of course, but still a bit humorous to me.

Then the hand went down his pants, absentmindedly. As women everywhere do, I quickly re-calibrated my initial creeper assessment. Maybe he’s not a total perv, maybe he’s just “adjusting.” But then, Oh. NO. He. Did. NOT!!! Surely I did not see him just put his straying hand’s fingers to his nose and sniff!! All the while reading that paper two inches from his face!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

What To Do When the Person Next to You Has Their Hand Down Their Pants

I incredulously start swiveling around. Is anyone else seeing this?! No, sleeping Hubs, who could sleep through Armageddon, is not. The people behind me have heads down, focused on their things. No flight attendant in sight. Ok, just focus on your book again. Maybe you saw it wrong. Check the time. Oh shit, an hour and a half left. Just don’t watch him. Turn off your peripheral vision. Oh, no he plunged and sniffed AGAIN!!!!

I wish I exaggerate, I do. I can never exaggerate my disgust at this point. It is amazing how much room you can put between you and another person in crowded coach class if you are truly motivated. As I practically sat on Sleeping Beauty Hubs next to me, clinical diagnoses such as “exhibitionist” “frotterist” and “compulsive” were going through my head. My mind shifted gears. His hand is down his pants again, doing something I had and have no desire to think about. With my clinical brain on I’m now concerned with increasing frequency and duration. And for the love of everything sacred why does he keep sniffing his fingers!?! Fleeing seemed impossible. I had this paralyzing vision of me making any sudden movements and him wiping those fingers on me.

Then that hand of his, that he never looked at, always focused on world news, started to creep down again. Flee time was over: fight remains the option. This time I made that instinctual “nuh uhhhh” sound that comes right before you do that three snap z motion, all the while pretend focused on my own reading. His hand hovered and then went back to the paper.

So we began our dance. My revulsion and fear that he would wipe his fingers on me or expose himself changed to rage and the visualization of ramming his head repeatedly into the window. I genuinely think the only thing that restrained me at one point was that I would have to touch him. Then that passed.  I made a game of counting the length of time from one hand down the pant attempt to the next. Soon I didn’t have to make my tsking sounds. He was catching himself pre-waistband, hand hovering and then retreating. We were making progress.  Back to nose pick pick, flick flick.

Lessons from Misadventures

We landed and I crawled/fell over my husband and into the aisle before any other person on the plane. Rome awaited. Beauty and art and cheese and pasta and wine and ITALY awaited.  Finger Sniffer soon moved to the “grossest person I have ever sat next to on a plane” memory, a story which delighted other people upon arrival back home. Because as much as people try to enjoy hearing about your swank business flight perks and all the vitality of Italy, they also really like hearing about how your unicorns and rainbows trip is interrupted by brushes with (safe) disgust.

Nothing is perfect. Nothing is permanent. Good times aren’t forever, but neither was that Lufthansa flight.  So thank you, Finger Sniffer, for bringing perspective. We don’t travel just to see new and beautiful things, just to check off something on a list, just to create popular social media. We travel because it makes us feel alive, out of our routines, like anything could be possible. And that includes Finger Sniffer as much as it includes Florence.

Travel on.

(Travel- Europe or otherwise- has a price tag but never fear! Need some help getting a good deal on airfare, earning and using points, finding upgrades, finding the right hotel or scoring good hotel deals in expensive places/events? Stick with us. We got this.)