MEMOIR | TRAVEL | WHAT NOT TO DO

My Brain on… Caffeine?

Uncharacteristic and disorderly behavior on a plane

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I was on a long-haul flight from Honolulu to New York City in 2019, which was one leg of an even longer-haul journey from Sydney, Australia to Raleigh, N.C. I always fall asleep as soon as the engines start, and I had already been traveling for more than 20 hours.

I woke up from a nap that had lasted about two hours and I had apparently slept through dinner. I got into a conversation with a stranger, a man two seats to my left, and within less than 15 minutes he announced “I never imagined that I would be sitting next to a psycho-b!+ch like you!”

Let me backtrack a little. When I woke up, the tray table attached to the empty seat to my left had been lowered and was covered with individually wrapped snacks: beef jerky, ritz crackers, tootsie rolls and other little wrapped candies. The man, in the seat to the left of that one, was staring at me expectantly, as though he’d been waiting for me to wake up.

“Hi!” he said a little too brightly, given the lateness of the evening. “Would you like a snack?”

I said no, because I didn’t like the look of any of the items on the tray. “Oh go on!” he continued. “How about you just have a little candy?”…