Pickin' Boogas

I’m sitting in the rear of a Delta jet, the right-side aisle seat of the middle row, 39E to be exact. Before leaving the ground, I am already assured of arriving at least an hour and a half late to LA, courtesy of variable winds and creative traffic control at the world’s busiest airport. I was initially pleased to be seated next to an unassuming, gangly teenager; it could have easily been little Johnny first plane ride, or a sweaty, fat, bald executive – the kind that commandeer the armrest you’re supposed to share and somehow ooze into your seat like hot play doh.

When he reached into his bag to pull out a cylinder of unopened Pringles, my stomach gurgled in jealousy. He made yeoman's work of the Pringles and I realized it'd been quite some time since I’d hung around an adolescent. No sooner had he finished did he launch his pinky clear into his cerebellum, clawing at an unseen nostril foe. My eyes, in direct violation of my brain’s orders, could not look away, widening in silent horror as he extracted the carnage. At that moment everything slowed down, like they say it sometimes does just before a car wreck, when the occupants have just enough time to register impending doom but not enough time to do anything about it. The wheels had spun off, and I watched as the booger hand fell to his lap, mere inches to my left. He had to be 15 or 16, old enough to have a face full of acne yet young enough to apparently feel at ease picking his nose in the middle seat of a full airplane. I returned to my book and tried desperately to put it out of my mind.

I’d just hit my stride in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle when I heard the crunching. The boy had moved on to a bag of some kind of berry trail mix. He held the bag with the booger hand and fished its contents awkwardly with the other, before cutting out the middleman and draining the rest into his mouth. Crumbs cascaded down his face, down his shirt, before spilling onto the property line armrest to their final resting place on my jeans. In what would otherwise be construed as sweet, the boy reached to brush his mess off me, but I protested – there was no way to tell what else that boy had caked onto his clumsy fingers.

I reread the same passage several times before I gave up and turned my full attention to dreaming about the arrival of the drink cart. Only whiskey could solve this boy. It was D-Day in 39D, and the kid’s nose was Normandy. Somehow, between leafing through the pages of a monster truck magazine and managing the Tete offensive, the boy made his way through a Hershey bar and a bag of Chex Mix.

“I think I have a tissue in my briefcase, would you like me to get it for you?” I asked, when I couldn’t take it any longer.

“No thanks” said the boy, nonplussed by my offer. I might as well have offered him a doorstop.

“If you need some, they're right here," I said, while placing a bundle of tissues on my food tray.

I awoke 30 minutes later and the boy's head had drifted over into my personal space, dangerously close to my left arm, and the tissues were gone. I looked over at his tray and there they were, used and soggy and streaked with booger blood snot trails.