The Trip Home - I of II

Ima gonna have to divide this up between my legs - the first leg of my journey, from London to D.C., and the second, from D.C. homeward to San Francisco.

"I know I'm sleep-deprived," my journal reads, "but so far this trip home has been hell on wheels without the benefit of wheels." Here's the litany:

1.) In Heathrow, some man pushed past me in the security line and kept pushing til there was no more room. Then he just stood there. No rush any more, just wanted to see how far he could get.

2.) An American couple in front of me, who had dutifully (if uselessly) scanned their shoes at the FIRST set of machines, despite an array of LCD displays listing every item in need of scanning (with shoes noticeable in their absence), were quite upset to be asked to remove their shoes again (for the first time) at the specifically-designed-to-scan-shoes machine. I tell ya, life is so HARD sometimes! When you're stupid.

3.) On the flight, the guy in the seat next to me immediately spreads his right knee so far into my quadrant that it's either I press mine together practically into the aisle or it's time for hours of knee-on-knee action. Then, betraying any excuse of unconsciousness, he immediately offers to let me use his pen when I start to examine my Customs form. Yeah, mate, I'll bet you'd like me to use your pen.

4.) Two seconds into the flight, POW, seat back in front of me comes crashing down. Giant head. I am forced to watch all the in-flight films at a forty-five degree angle (although the entire flight, and possibly the lives of myself and many others, is/are saved when Hot Fuzz comes on. That review requires its own post.) At one point, when the guy's in the loo, I unrecline his seat. It's not like I'm clubbing a baby seal or anything. I come to wonder, according to my journal, "whether there is a place on the human scalp into which a man could plunge a pen, a common plastic ball-point, with such force that the ball point would penetrate the skull and actually pith the brain, and in such a fashion as to exclusively knock out the pain receptors responsible for detecting a penetration of the skull. I think this as I wonder how the man in Seat 30B would look with a pen sticking out of his head.

the journal continues...

"If you saw a man with a pen sticking out of his head, would you tell him? Would you consider trying to pull it out for him, as you might flip down the tag in back of another's shirt or dress if it stuck out? What sort of sound would it make, do you think? What sort of sound would he make? Lord, Buddha, Shiva, whoever, please let us land soon. I still don't trust the bespectacled feller next to me and I'm starting to genuinely fear for the life of the constantly-reclined gentleman in front of me. If not for his life, than at least for the integrity of his scalp. That and I don't know where I'll find another pen."