So I’ve just busted out my cheese and crackers that I bought at the airport kiosk for most probably $20 with great enthusiasm, whilst surrounding me and my small Asian nostrils was the fragrant aroma of Air Asia meals that other passengers had thoughtfully pre-purchased prior to boarding their flight, most likely at time of booking. Why can’t they do it like the old days where they just serve you meals on board the flight regardless? I don’t know if I’ll want to eat in 3 months times at 6 in the morning at the time I book my flight!
Anyway, as part of me was lamenting that I didn’t pre-purchase anything but my flight ticket, I kept myself entertained by reading travel writer David Fox’s book Loster on my “thoughtfully” prepacked Kindle!
Leaning forward on the slide out table in front of me, bringing my head closer to the chair in front of me, my nostrils twitched and the hairs inside my nose stood up to attention wanting to prevent the other “aroma” that surrounded my personal space.
Not Malaysian airplane meals, not my over expensive cheese and crackers, not my usually smelly feet (because I’d just taken my shoes off) but the subtle smell of stale body odour. Casually scanning my immediate vicinity for the culprit, poking my head up like an ostrich or a more like the periscope of a submarine, my nostrils wanted to push out what it had unknowingly let in.
where are you? what are you? who are you? I don’t like you go away now please! Show yourself to me.
Found YOU!
It was the balding man in front of me!
Being short, I don’t get to see much when I’m sitting (well standing too) but the back of his head peered over the chair in front, grey, greasy and sparse. I think the greasiness of his hair or lack of, and the close proximity of my head to his head, the smell (which I realised was his sweaty head) and the fact that I was attempting to enjoy my cheese and crackers (pretending they were coated with Malaysian flavours) whilst most of the passengers around me enjoyed their Asian meals added to the yuk factor of my awareness.
Is there such as thing as “head BO”?!
At the point of my discovery and feeling repulsed I immediately stopped eating my crackers, deciding to let my cheese sweat and share this experience with you because I knew you would sympathise and relate.
I’m sure you’ve sat next to that smelly rotund man on the plane that snores and drops his head on your shoulder intermittently, or the elderly woman that is constantly coughing, sniffling and aplogising to you for her insistent annoying idiosyncratic habits or the toddler that keeps bumping your chair while you attempt to doze off into dreamland on your long flight to somewhere exotic because you were well over due for that restful holiday.
Happy holidays! It can only get better!
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