Flying Lice

Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but for some reason flying makes me feel very grubby. Perhaps it's because I'm crammed into a tiny little space with lots of strange people that may or may not practice good personal hygiene. Perhaps it's because the sudden change in climate makes my skin feel instantly more or less dry than it should. I don't really know what it is.

I also worry a lot about getting lice from airplane seats. I'm so disgusted by the idea of bugs living on my person that I worry about this quite a bit. I used to make Sarah do routine inspections of my head to make sure that I'm okay. You can never be too sure, and the minute I start wondering, my scalp becomes unbelievably itchy, and then I have to get it inspected. (For the record, she's never found anything, thank heavens.) I've never admitted this concern about contracting lice from flying to anyone before. Then while I was in Utah last week Sarah mentioned it while I was fretting about whether or not I have lice, or the dry air was just making my scalp itch. It's kind of reassuring to know that I'm not the only one that has considered this possibility. The thing is that you just never know who sat in that seat before you. It might have been a bald man, but there's also the very real possibility that it was a small child whose head was teeming with life. There's just no telling.

Back to my point, because I regard flying to be an inherently dirty activity, I never shower before I catch a morning flight. Why bother, I know that I'm just going to need to shower again when I get to my final destination. The thing is, I think I'm alone on this one. I'm always baffled by the way I show up at the airport having done nothing more than brushed my teeth and changed out of my pj's, only to run into some member of the ward who looks like she just stepped off the front page of a fashion magazine. I predicted this would happen again on my flight back on Sunday, and sure enough, there she was sitting in the row in front of me, looking lovely and well-groomed. And there I was sporting he previous day's outfit, hair flying all over the place, no makeup, and wondering if I still had sleep lines on my face. I started surveying the rest of the people on my flight, and I was forced to conclude that I appeared to be the only person who just rolled out of bed and showed up at the airport. For example look at this guy:
Not the one directly in the front, but rather you're looking at the mohawk further up. You can't tell me that guy didn't have to get up early and put in some serious effort to get his hair to do that. Who are these people? Am I really the only one that doesn't think that prepping for an early morning flight is wasted effort?

On a totally unrelated note I sat next to a girl on this flight who asked me to inspect her face a few minutes after takeoff to see if the left side was swelling. When I told her that it appeared normal she asked me in a sort of accusatory fashion if I was positive. Since I have no idea what she normally looks like I just told her that I couldn't see any problems. Turns out she was having some sort of issue with the air pressure in her sinuses. I found this out when she told the stewardess, who stood there talking to her for several minutes about the mucus that was undoubtedly just "plugging things up." A big thanks to her for creating that mental image. Although this passenger chewed some gum for a minute and said that resolved the issue, she also informed the stewardess that it was the worst flight of her entire life. Just before landing she asked me what I thought of the flight, and although I just resorted to shrugging my shoulders, I was sorely tempted to let her know that having her onboard had certainly made it a lot more interesting.