July 9, 2016:
Immediately after takeoff my rowmate unwraps her salad, balancing a full cup of sticky-looking vinaigrette sans lid on her bouncing seatback tray, while we lurch and careen through and around dozens of thunderheads surrounding the airport. It's a disaster waiting to happen and as I stare warily, imagining gooey brown all over my blazer and jeans and iPad, we bounce a couple of hundred feat through convection space and my eyes become extra wide.
Not hers. She eats ravenously and without self-awareness, wrapped in her headphones, not remotely concerned with me or our shared rowmate on her other side, or manners or decorum. She eats one thing after another all through the flight.