Planes, trains, automobiles. With our interconnected lives, we spend so much time in transport that I’ve made it my mission to be a lovely traveler. What’s a lovely traveler, you may ask? Well, it’s a person who is respectful of those around them [keeping the space on your side of the armrest], will take the blame graciously without making a stink [like the man who used the lavatory on the plane before me and didn’t flush his visitor down so by the time I left it smelled like I had excreted a dead carcass—but it wasn’t me], and not losing my salvation when people cough or sneeze in close quarters without COVERING THEIR MOUTH.

You can ask anyone who knows me well, I loathe sneezing. Like, I think it’s the grossest contaminant of our environment besides sewage dumping. Bacteria explodes from a human orifice and airborne germs travel up to 6 feet in front of you. [Someone hand me a paper bag so I can breathe into and not faint from disgust.] When you travel on a airplane, the air is recycled  so all the sneezing, coughing, and burping that occurs during travel is passed from one passenger to another. For the love of all things hygienic, please cover your mouth when you sneeze.

I usually will ignore when people sneeze or cough on planes and assume they were raised by ravage beasts in the Amazon if they don’t cover their mouths. I’m a lovely traveler, remember? But my kindness went out the window at 30,000 feet in the air this past week.

In flight for a trip to Washington DC for work, I sat behind a nice man in a light blue button down shirt, dark denim, and tan loafers. How do I remember his outfit? Because HE IS SEARED IN MY MIND FOR-EV-ER.

I was seated a row ahead of him, one seat over. I was engrossed in Divergent [don’t judge me] when all of a sudden I heard what sounded like Mount Vesuvius erupting and then feeling a spray of along the left side of my face and hands, on my eyeball and on my iPad screen. 

Without registering the full weight of what occurred, I look behind me to see a guy holding what looked like lime green slime in his hand, connected by strings of mucus to his nose.

Every Christian ounce of goodness felt like it melted from my muscles and I wanted to leap across my seat and strangle somebody. I’m not violent by nature, but in this situation I felt like Chun Li from Mortal Kombat. FINISH HIM!

He pulled out a tissue—as in one—and gave it to me. I needed Bounty paper towels, a bottle of bleach, and salvation, not a tissue.

Maybe it was exhaustion, being dehydrated, traveling at 30,000 feet in the air, or straight delusion, but I heard my mother’s voice sweetly say, Now Bianca, sneezing is a natural occurrence. Everybody sneezes. Be gentle. Like Jesus. Yes, be like Jesus. In nanoseconds, I felt the Mortal Kombat instinct die a slow death, took the tissue and excused myself to the restroom and scrubbed my hands and face like the answer of life was under my third epidermis layer.

Honestly, there’s no point in telling you this story other than begging humanity to please cover your mouths when you sneeze. You never know what may come out.

Secondly, for all the mom’s in the world who think that their words don’t matter, believe me they do. You never know when your voice may ring in the minds of your children and caution them from making a bad decision. Or in my case, nearly committing homicide at Delta flight 8771.

Love,
Chun Li