Recently I flew from Anchorage to Las Vegas to give a talk at the New Media Expo. Going from a chilly climate to a potentially blast-furnace-hot one meant I’d need nothing but sandals, so why bother wearing shoes on the plane?
But this was an overnight flight and I can’t sleep when my feet are cold. Sighing, I made a sartorially awkward choice: gray wool socks with my Teva sandals.
And yes, I know how fugly that looks, but I’m built for comfort, not for speed. Besides, it wasn’t wearing the socks with sandals that left me feeling embarrassed. It was the removal.
The terminal in Los Angeles made my feet feel overdressed, instantly. Yet I felt it absolutely necessary to remove the socks in the ladies’ room. Doing so in the waiting area – even an empty one – seemed indecent somehow.
Why is that, I wonder, given that I’ve seen people blithely indulge in some pretty startling examples of self-care? Such as:
- Clipping toenails: Seriously – you couldn’t wait until you got where you’re going?
- Clipping fingernails: At least do this over a trash can, folks. (Hint: Many don’t.)
- Using a comb (or, worse, fingernails) to loosen and shake off dandruff: Bonus grossout points for telling a companion, “Wow, look at that!”
- Flossing: Rest rooms have mirrors and sinks and trash cans. Try them!
- Changing diapers: It’s those rest rooms, not the waiting areas, that are supposed to smell iffy.
- Using nasal drops: It’s not the application but rather the accompanying snorts and snurfles that make this a self-care tactic best left unshared.
- Applying makeup: I wonder how many young men are disillusioned by that one? It’s like seeing the magician palm the quarter – your sense of wonder is gone, maybe for good.
Too much information
None of those things are illegal. But I believe all of them to be TMI and they bug me the same way that too-specific public cellphone conversations do. Yesterday on a walking trail someone strolled past me while yelping, “Well, she’s the reason they have to go to court in the first place!”
Yeah, and you’re the reason that smartphones are becoming a public scourge. At least lose the cell yell, oversharers.
Once upon a time, I hear, people actually dressed up to travel. These days some folks get on planes in their pajamas – and not all of them are children. I don’t begrudge people their comfort, especially on longer flights. Myself, I wear jeans and a comfortable shirt and hope to fall asleep.
You know what else I do? Clip my nails before I leave for the airport.
I’m glad I spared fellow travelers the sight of me peeling off socks and putting sandals back on, even if none of them was paying attention. Doubly glad that I didn’t start my own phone conversation until I found a deserted waiting area a few gates down.
Gladdest of all that I no longer have to worry about changing diapers – which I wouldn’t dream of doing on the adjacent seat.
Readers: What’s your (least) favorite form of egregious public grooming?
Related reading:
- Living in the quieter spots of life
- In which I cop to some odd habits
- The cell phone as Romulan cloaking device
- I’m through explaining
I am pretty easy-going, but seeing somebody pop their pimples in public
just makes me cringe a little bit. I also get a little grossed out when I see people brush their teeth in a public bathroom. I am all for hygiene and understand sometimes it has to be done, but something about that doesn’t sit with me, especially when I’m going to wash my hands in the same sink or when I watch them set their toothbrush down on the counter and wonder what was there before that.
This must be the day for airport/airplane stories of gross public behavior:
http://sgag.sg/posts/dear-passenger-15a
Eeewww. Thanks for sharing. I think.
Plucking their eyebrows! Nail-filing! Snot-rockets on the sidewalk!
I think the most basic rule of public grooming should be: try and keep your DNA to yourself.
“Keep your DNA to yourself.”
This!
This is a tangent but licking fingers after eating food in public just makes be cringe. Because everyone knows you are then going to touch everything with your moist germy spittle covered fingers. Please use a napkin.
It would be ok by me if you took your socks off at a seat in an unused gate area, then used the airport facilities to wash your hands. I would be worried about losing my balance in that dirty airport restroom.
Fortunately this was a clean rest room, with a bench. But I know what you mean. It always appalls me when people suggest that a modestly covered breastfeeding mom should do this in the rest room. Hey, I’ll give my kid his or her lunch in a public toilet if you’ll bring yours along and eat with us.
I always get grossed out when people pick their nose in the car. I know that it is their space but we on the outside can see in the windows….your not alone!
I would say nose picking in general, or wiping runny noses on a sleeve. The other would be plucking chin hair.
Thanks for sharing, drivers. 🙁
I must admit to being guilty of changing diapers in airline waiting areas. Why? Because they didn’t have changing stations in the bathrooms when my kids were babies. My diaper bag had a plastic mat that could be put on the floor. I’d try to find a quiet corner where no one would care nor see what was going on.
I’m a big hiker, too, and hate seeing people on their phones while walking. Isn’t the point to get away from it all and simply enjoy nature’s sounds/sights?? To each his own, I guess.
Diaper-changing stations are now much more common. Some enlightened places even put them in the men’s room. Back in the day, not so much.
A friend of mine tells a family story about her parents visiting Canada toward the end of World War II, or maybe it was just after the war; in any case, meat was being rationed. Their Canadian hosts offered them a country ham. To get it across the border, her mom wrapped and wrapped and wrapped the thing, put it at the bottom of a sturdy bag and put dirty diapers on top.
Let’s just say the U.S. border official who said “What’s in this bag?” declined to search further once he got a whiff of what was in the bag.
I’ve been guilty of taking off my socks, I think. I don’t remember specifically, but I think I’ve done it.
Everything else… Ew.
I may weird some people out because I spend at least 10 minutes in the gate area stretching my legs. As in literally stretching on the floor. I have restless leg syndrome, and it tends to flare up in confined spaces.
More stretching in public, I say! It’s a good example for the rest of us 🙂
The people who ride the CTA use it as a beauty counter, nail clipping and polishing! Makeup and perfume and hand cream, strong smells on a train with no windows to open, gross. And people look at me and the 3 kids oddly because we read actual books and don’t own kindles!
I like your ham story though. Interesting.
Hi Marcia! Come to think of it, I did see some women on the CTA checking/redoing their makeup while I lived there.
Alas, we’ve had to perfect the super fast diaper change in public places because there are so many places around here that don’t have any changing station or a remotely useable surface that isn’t filthy. We’ve taken to doing it in the slightly deconstructed stroller mostly, for lack of a suitable place to do it. Some things don’t get MUCH better, I guess.
I once read about a woman who changed the baby’s diaper on the table in a restaurant — and it was a special-delivery diaper, not just a damp one — in full view of nearby diners, and then asked the waiter to dispose of the full one.
Ack.
:O Holy cow, now that’s some nerve. We’d always make sure the changing was covered up and dispose of the diaper ourselves!
Well, I’ve been in that situation where I have to do an emergency nail clipping/repair while waiting to board the plane. What’s one supposed to do when a nail gets ripped on a suitcase zipper while you’re in line to board? Waiting until it’s possible to get on the plane and into the lavatory means taking the chance it will rip off to the quick first and then there’s blood involved. I think clipping a nail is a better choice in such a situation. I try to be discrete and clip with my hand inside my purse or held closely over it. That way the clipping falls into my personal space, at least, and not on the floor.
Not much grosses me out, frankly. We’re all walking bags of spit, blood, and stink, and sometimes this is more apparent than others. I do take offense when men urinate out in the open though, such as against walls. In some places this is considered normal. When I was in India for work I remember looking out the window of my high floor, fancy hotel room and seeing guys peeing against a wall on a public street every morning. I guess it was their pee spot or something.
Maybe they were marking their territories.
I’m definitely aware of the whole “walking bags of…” thing, having raised a child and babysat many others and also helped take care of some very critically ill people. Perhaps that’s why I’m hyper-sensitive to it: Put that stuff someplace else, please.
When I was riding on the Virginia transit, there was a sign in the train cars telling people to dress, shave, put on makeup, eat breakfast, brush their teeth, etc. before getting on the train. I recall being surprised that the sign was necessary. When people feel squeezed for time, they make up the difference in what they think of as down time. But I resent the usurping of public space for private life. Just like I resent someone talking on their cell in the public restroom. I really hate the intrusion on my privacy that could entail. I also hate hearing people’s conversations in the grocery aisles, in restaurants, hiking trails, etc. The world is not your living room.
But, I was appalled when a Californian told me she routinely ate her bowl of oatmeal on the freeway. (She did not carpool.) That was too dangerous, for her and others. I don’t want self-driving cars, but even less do I want people who drive as if their car already were.
That sounds pretty dangerous to me. You’d like to think people would be careful, but I’m often disappointed.
My son was on a flight when he saw the man across the aisle pull the safety card instructions from the seat pocket and floss his teeth with it. So very wrong on so many levels
I think I speak for all of us when I say, “eeewww.”
I don’t care much for people who floss their teeth at the dinner table. A friend of mine did that, I told him how gross I thought it was, and he promptly showed me his used floss so I could see what was stuck to it. Sigh, that’s what friends are for.
Strangely enough, I’m not bothered by people who discreetly or otherwise pull their underwear out of their cracks. Let’s just say I can relate.
Flossing an offending tooth is perfectly proper. Flossing top and bottom is not.
If you took off your socks and put them in a plastic bag, I would not be horrified. If you took them off and shook them out, I would be grossed. Of course, I would expect hand-sanitizer to be used.
I am guilty of changing a diaper in the airport waiting area because I was traveling without another adult and didn’t want to lug baby, stroller, diaper bag into the restroom & didn’t feel brave enough to ask a stranger to watch my stuff. FYI – it was only wet.
Honestly, the larger problem is when Mommy needs to use the restroom & you have to lug all your stuff & baby in with you.