is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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3 monkeys on a plane.

On my flight from PHL to SFO I had, as usual, an aisle seat. I sometimes miss being able to look out the window but I feel trapped when I’m not in an aisle seat. The guy in the window seat got on fairly soon after I did, and he had terrible body odor. I thought to myself, well, at least someone will be sitting between us. Then the guy in the middle seat arrived and he had terrible breath. It smelled like he had eaten a great deal of pepperoni and formaldehyde and then not consumed any water or committed any time or effort to dental hygiene in like 18 years or something. Luckily his presence did block out most of the body odor problem and he also slept for most of the flight, most of the time with his mouth closed. But every now and then he would open his mouth and release this terrible invisible cloud of misery. It’s strange how desperate a situation like that can feel, given that no one’s really in danger or anything. But as I was sitting there, suffering the latest odor-attack, I thought to myself, it’s weird how much you can hate someone you don’t know sometimes. The three of us made up a row of smell-evil, breathe-evil and think-evil.

It’s a superficial hate, one solved by time and distance. But in the moment it is real!

One way to make the world a better place is to attend to your bodily hygiene before getting ready to spend many, many hours in a small enclosed space with other people who are just trying to make the best of things.

Sure, maybe both of them were in the midst of really long around-the-world travels and had been unable to attend to the basics of hygiene for completely understandable reasons. Probably not. I am confused by the choices they made!

5:38 p.m. - December 29, 2015

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