Earlier this month, I was on a flight from Phoenix to Atlanta, enroute to Dubai the next day, when I noticed something disturbing and inappropriate. I'm sitting in seat 2A, on a 757, a nice business class seat, next to the widow. No problem. I'm dressed in business attire - a nice pair of trousers and a tapered fit shirt, wing tip shoes, when a kid in his late 20s, early 30s, sits down next to me in 2B, wearing baggy checkered "shorts" - i put "shorts" in quotes, because anything that is longer than one's knee, in my perspective, are not shorts, they're capri pants, and should be called 'capri pants' appropriately. Shorts end at or above the knee.
But it wasn't the kid's attire that disturbed me. No, it was the fact that he played with himself, fondling his genitals with one hand as he surfed with his iphone before take off with the other, repeatedly. And then after take off, again, he started up his phone, and resumed his public self-massage. This was not just a slight 'adjustment of the boys' as nearly every adult male (and all grade school and high school boys) has done from time to time, in public, when you think no one is looking. No, this was an all out testicle adjustment and genital stroking, massaging, for the entire time the plane was loading. Maybe he had a bad case of crabs? I don't know what was on his phone, but he was certainly enjoying himself. I tried to read my book (a Nietzsche compendium) but it was disquieting to see out of the corner of my eye, his hand and arm repeatedly moving, tugging away at his shorts, almost rhythmically. Why Mr. Michael D. Me**ger (when you go to the rest room, don't leave your boarding pass where other passengers can see it, or you will be called out for your behaviour) thought that he was invisible, or that it was perfectly fine to repeatedly fondle himself in public, I do not know. I hope I never sit next to such a person again, anywhere.
9 years ago
I wonder if he did that as a kid all the time, and his parents never told him to stop, or if this was a habit developed later-in-life.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question. As fathers of sons, we are not unaccustomed to seeing a boy of 3 or with his hand in his front pocket or down his shorts making inordinate adjustments, often at family gatherings or in a store, and telling the boy to stop it, that it is inappropriate. Perhaps Mr Michael had overly permissive or absentee parents. Whatever it is, I hold I never have to sit next to him again.
ReplyDeleteI "hope" I never have to either =) (typos)
ReplyDelete