Billions of Micro-Beads

          Is it utterly impossible for a Hilton to travel on an airline without something ridiculous happening?  Apparently, yes.  Although St. Bob and I are not dead, yet, so I guess we can still hope for an uneventful trip someday.

          This time it was Bob.  He was flying from California where we live, to visit his brother in Mississippi.  And, since it was a red-eye flight, he brought  along one of those travel pillows for your neck.

          Here is where you stop reading, if you are sharing this story with a child.  Because we all want children to be law-abiding citizens, right?  We like stories that show good guys getting dessert, let’s say, and bad guys getting their just desserts. We do not want kids thinking that the minute you obey a rule, your whole life goes down the toilet.

          And yet, here’s what happened.  Bob decided to curl up with his pillow and get a little shut-eye.  Except  there was an annoying tag-- the scratchy tag that tells you not to remove it.

          Well, all these mattress and pillow tags also say, if you read the fine print, that the consumer can remove it, so Bob does.  And whammo—the seam splits open and the tiny, styrofoam micro-beads inside explode into the airplane.

          They cover Bob.  They cover his seat.  They cover the floor, and they cover the passenger next to him.  The entire seating area now looks like a snow globe. 

          Not only that, but these Styrofoam balls stick to you because of static electricity, something exacerbated by dry air, and airplanes are notorious for the driest air you can find.  Bob apologizes to his mortified seatmate, and the two of them begin trying to scrape off the little balls, none of which want to budge.  Like burrs, they hunker down into the weave of these guys’ clothing, and even a sticky lint roller would probably not pull them off.

          A flight attendant brings a damp towel, but what you really need are eight or nine damp blankets.  It’s a total disaster, and other passengers nearby are scooting into empty seats a good distance away, because spreading into the aisle are clearly round, white cooties.

          Bob arrives looking like the abominable snowman, and no one will walk within ten feet of him.  His seatmate is still madly trying to brush off the stubborn little beads.  Bob calls me from the terminal and I laugh for twenty minutes and beg him to take pictures.  He will not.

          But I think the city of Jackson should have declared a Snow Day, and sent a TV reporter to interview Bob.  Then I could have posted a video as well.  Pity.

You can read about similar disasters in my novel, Sisters in the Mix, however.  One of them has a TV cooking show and OCD.  Guaranteed to liven up your summer.