Take Go-gurt, for example. Did we really need a faster way to consume yogurt? Were a bunch of people really sitting around thinking, “Well, we love yogurt, but it just takes so long to eat … is there a way we could leverage Otter Pop technology so we can get those calories faster?”

Or those commercials where the chickens want to be mistaken for ones from Foster Farms. Why, oh, dear lord, why do those poor chickens want to be eaten so badly? Is it some sort of sick death wish?

And when did people start wearing really thick tights in place of pants? Also, how did blue raspberry become a thing? I have never seen a blue raspberry in my life. Never.

It’s just that … I simply DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

But perhaps what mystifies me more than mutant berries and suicidal poultry are my fellow travelers. Time and time again I find myself on planes with people whose actions confound me. I try to understand a scenario in which their behaviors make sense: are they first-time flyers? Drunk? Sociopaths? Or do they know I am watching them and are simply trying to screw with me? (If it’s the latter … well, done. Well done.)

I can’t really say. But they constantly do things that have me hissing, “Why? Dear god, WHY?” while gently ramming my thumbs into my eye-sockets.

And yet, I’m truly grateful to them. Because their antics provide me with hours of free in-flight entertainment and tons of material for my blog.

And so, for this WTF Wednesday, I present the 12 most baffling airplane passengers I’ve encountered in real life. This is the sort of stuff – along with the enduring appeal of Dave Matthews – that keeps me up at night (and if these are the biggest battles I have, then I’m a lucky gal indeed).

1. The person who brings nothing on the plane with them. Absolutely nothing. I don’t getit. What are they going to do when they finish the in-flight magazine? No, no, DON’T START TALKING TO ME. Unless you know where blue raspberries come from. That is information I need to have.
   

   Don't tell me you're going to stare at the natural beauty outside your window for three hours ... because that's just twisted.

   -

2. People who use the lavatory while barefoot. I hate to tell them the truth, but here it is: not every drop of liquid on the bathroom floor is water. Actually, I suspect most of it isn’t.
3. Fliers who unhook their seatbelts the moment the captain indicates that they may do so. As though they are suddenly not traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, tens of thousands of feet high in the sky.
4. Folks who try to recline their chairs when sitting in front of an exit row. They are Don Quixote, feebly chasing after windmills. The look on their face when the flight attendant explains that their seat does not recline is nothing short of devastating. I feel for them, I really do. But how have they never heard of SeatGuru?
5. Individuals who get exasperated at other people’s crying babies. Oh, the shock! The horror! An infant who is crying. Clearly this is the first time that has ever happened in the history of time.
   

   A crying child? Who ever HEARD of such a thing?!

    -

6. Economy passengers who glare at the people in first class. Really? You’re jealous of the guy who’s spent so much of his life in the air that he now gets the privilege of a cup of warm cashews and a few extra inches of legroom in exchange for missing his daughter’s fifth birthday? Right. That makes sense. Glare away.
   

   You get fancy soup and a cheese plate, but your spouse is probably gonna leave you.

   -

7. Anyone who tries to move around the cabin when beverages are being served. They always seem so genuinely shocked that they can’t squeeze around a cart that is designed to take up the entire aisle. In a way, I understand: I’m still trying to squeeze my aisle-wide hips into skinny jeans.
8. The guy who willingly offers to gate check his bag after he’s dragged it all the way on to the plane. I bet he was the sort of kid who reminded his teachers to assign homework on a Friday. He will one day rule the world, and we will resent him for it.
9. IPad owners who spend their flight watching nothing but reruns of Two and a Half Men. Monsters, the lot of them.
10. Folks who bring fast food onto the plane. The idea is to bring something more appetizing than airline food. (Also, to the woman on my flight who unwrapped a Whopper within 10 minutes of departure and slowly ingested it over the course of 45 minutes, leaving the whole cabin wreaking of onions: You, madame, are a sadist.)
    

    The "meat" was so tough I broke my fork on it, and the flight attendant got exasperated when I asked for another one.

    -

11. Fashionistas. Yes, you look amazing. But it took you 45 minutes to get through security, and now your feet are too swollen to fit into your Alexander McQueen hoof shoes so you are headed to the lavatory barefoot. God help us all.
12. Anyone who manages to sleep on a flight. Please, for the love of mankind, teach me how.
    

    To this day, we still talk about this guy.

You, no doubt, have seen some equally weird stuff while traveling, right? Please don’t hesitate to share your stories in the comments section below. And seriously, if anyone can explain Go-gurt, email me. I need to understand.

Even on a good day, I tend to lean pretty far towards the crazy end of the sanity spectrum. But leave me at home for three weeks, and I start to go a little bonkers. I’ve plotted it all on this chart.

It took me forever to find a picture of Velma from Scooby-Doo that wasn't all porny. I severely am bothered by this.

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In lieu of traveling, I’ve started doing things. Weird things. Like working out (I’m actually unable to walk down the stairs of my home right now because yesterday I paid a trainer to put me through hell. I literally paid her to do things which, had we lived in Medieval times, would have been fit punishment for the crime of, I don’t know, being able to read. Don’t fool yourselves, kids: THERE WAS NO RENAISSANCE. The Dark Ages are alive and well, in the weight room at Gold’s Gym). I’ve fixed clothing that’s needed to be mended since 2006 and is consequently no longer in style. I even started tackling that huge pile of bills that keeps accumulating on my desk (I was waiting until it grew so big that it became sentient and learned to pay itself. I was going to name it “Final Notice.” But I grew impatient.)

And then last night, in anticipation of a friend coming over for dinner, I made namecards for the table. Nevermind that there would only be the three of us. And that we all knew each other very well. And we all sit in the same place every time we have dinner together. And that the names were completely made up.

-

There were lots of countesses anticipated at dinner.

-

This one was the crowd favorite:

"This ... this is the greatest name, ever."

-

I got less and less creative the more of these I made.

-

And towards the end, I sort of stopped trying.

-

I also made a strawberry, apple, and blueberry pie for dessert. We ate half of it, and none of us – not Lady Janet Smith (nee Fartsmonger), the honorable Viscount Herschel Bumnuzzler, nor Baron Von Hugenstein – had any regrets about this.

-

But really, I think maybe these namecards are a sign of something …

-

Like that I need to get on the road soon before I start organizing my sock drawer according to the feelings that each pair invokes, or writing a book of etiquette with an entire chapter dedicated to cat birthdays.

WTF, Everywhereist. KEEP IT TOGETHER. Life at home should not be crazier than the baggage claim at Newark.

Snow rarely happens in Seattle. We might get a few inches over a few days, but it’s been ages since we’ve seen this much snowfall, and actually had it stick around. The first night, the streets were filled with people. The park near our home was a snowball battlefield, and at least a dozen snowmen had been erected.

And … um, speaking of things being erected … (Note: if you work in a particularly conservative environment, you might not want to keep reading) let me tell you about the snow sculpture we encountered in the park.

At first, I had trouble discerning it was …

I don't get it. Clearly it's some sort of armless man with giant feet and a bowl haircut ... BUT WHY?

-

Then, after a bit of contemplation, I began to understand.

Ooooohhhhhhhhhhhh ...

 -

And I gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up!

I'm sincerely bummed that it's too late to send this out as our Christmas card.

-

Since taking these photos, we’ve gotten another solid six inches of snow, so the sculpture you see has probably toppled over, or is now a weird amorphous sibling to what it once was.

I will let you make your own jokes about that. I know we did.

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Looks lovely, right? But WAIT, there's more.

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I began questioning authority at a tender young age. This is in no small part due to my Floridian primary school education, which could have caused the most obedient of children to stand up and scream, “WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON AROUND HERE?”.

Like the time we had a musical performance about pioneer life, and we had to (I SWEAR TO HIGH HEAVEN THIS IS TRUE) recite the following lines:

“Fighting off injuns,
Pawnee, Shawnee, Apache, Sioux!”

And with each Native American tribe that we named, we were instructed to (and again, I’m not making this up, because even my imagination is not perverse enough to invent this) PRETEND WE WERE SWINGING A HATCHET.

It took me a few years before I was able to articulate how wrong the scene of a bunch of cute little kids singing “fighting off injuns” really was. Even at the time, though, I knew there was something amiss. And I put it in the only terms I knew how: “My mom,” I told a friend of mine, “is not going to like this play.”

And, bless her, she did not. (I believe her words were, simply, “Sweetie, that was really racist.”)

The experience left me with a lasting realization: sometimes institutions and people of authority (like my school and teachers) mess up big time when it comes to matters of race, and ethnicity, and not being total douchebags.

But I was still rather shocked when I saw this bit of stonework on the facade of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York:

You can begin feeling uncomfortable now.

 -

“Um, babe,” I said, tugging on my husband’s arm. “You see that, right?”

“See what?”

“The swastika right there.”

“Meh. It’s just a design.”

Just a design? JUST A DESIGN?! How was he not enraged? Why wasn’t he already mobilizing a protest to camp out on the steps on the venue and demand that they sandblast that white supremicist bullshit off the front of the building, immediately? Why didn’t he just tell his music teacher that he didn’t want to say ‘injun’ and sit out the rest of the play?

Err. Okay, that last one might be about me. But still.

I soon realized, though, that Rand was right. The Brooklyn Academy of Music was built in 1907 (as I stepped back and took a look at the entire building, I could see the date right across the front) – years before the Nazi party starting running around ruining things for everyone. At most, the design on the front of the building was homage to the Hindu symbol.

It was, theoretically, no less creepy than this pudgy cherub, which adorns the front of the building just adjacent to the swastikas:

Actually, that might be a bad example. This cherub is really friggin creepy.

-  

So the decor on the front of the BAM turned out to be all completely innocent, and easily explainable – unlike my fifth-grade school play, which still baffles me. Seriously, the script required a bunch of kids to run around repeating a racial slur while pretending to kill Native Americans.

WTF, Florida.

But as the years passed, and I actually spent some time in Manhattan, I realized that my dream New Year’s Eve, much like my girlhood vow to marry Charlie Sheen*, could not stand the test of time.

This year, we found ourselves in Jersey at the end of December, and we were contemplating going into the city for a few days. We had different agendas: some of us wanted to shop (okay, fine. It was me), some of us wanted to eat cupcakes (also me), but we all agreed on one point – we had to get out of the city by New Year’s Eve. Because it was going to be a madhouse.

And boy, were we right.

We could barely walk through Bryant Park. There were people everywhere.

-

The city was packed. Uptown, downtown, side streets, alleys. Every lobby of every hotel was mobbed, ever restaurant crowded, every show sold-out.

Before we left town on the night of the 30th, I glanced at some fliers our hotel was distributing, with tips about the festivities for New Years’ Eve. Apparently the NYPD was setting up “holding pens” in Times Square for those who wanted to participate in the festivities. They recommended you arrive before 4pm, pile into the pens, and … wait for midnight. Supposedly folks were there starting at dawn.

“Gah,” I told Rand. “That sounds so boring. And I hate port-o-potties.”

At which point my husband politely informed me that there were no port-o-potties. The people waiting in the pens would have to stay there for at least 8 hours, with no access to bathrooms.

And that was when I learned something alarming and somewhat unbelievable. Apparently a lot of the Times Square revelers that you see on television? They are wearing adult diapers. VOLUNTARILY.

Yup.

Let’s recap: a group of young people with  (presumably) perfectly functioning bladders were standing out in the cold wearing adult-sized diapers, all so they could watch Cee Lo Green butcher a John Lennon song, along with thousands of like-minded idiots. I fear for the future, as should you.

We, instead, stayed in Jersey. We made dinner, drank some wine, had access to a bathroom whenever we needed it, and went to bed at a reasonable hour.

No, we weren’t in Times Square. We weren’t even in New York. And it wasn’t particularly cold or clear. But the ball dropped, and at midnight, I had someone to kiss. And if I squinted, he almost looked like Charlie Sheen of years ago – before all that winning nonsense ruined his face.

This photo is blurry on account of love.

-

Plus, I wasn’t wearing a diaper, so there’s that.
-

*I was eight. Don’t judge. It’s not like you made great decisions when you were eight, either.

They read comics and played Atari, and sometimes I got to watch.

-

The result? I was a told a bunch of things that weren’t even close to being true, and I believed the lot of them, on account of the legitimacy that comes with age:

Me: When you were a kid in Italy, did you have a TV?

Cousin: No. We just stared at a square on the wall.

———

Brother: Stay away from earwigs.

Me: Why?

Brother: Because they will crawl in your ear and lay eggs in your brain.

———

Me: What was that sound?

Cousin: Ghosts, probably.

———

And so on. Fear not – I got my revenge. I gave most of them chicken pox, peed in every pool they ever swam in, and now that my cousins have children of their own, I can do the next generation what they did to me. Someone hand me a baby lion, because the CIRCLE OF LIFE IS HAPPENING RIGHT HERE.

Of course, the teasing was not without consequence. In addition to not sleeping through the night until I was 18 or so (Damn those ghosts), I now find every word that my cousins and brother utter to be highly specious, at best.

It’s why, when I was visiting one of my cousins for the holidays, and he told me that there were burrowing owls roaming around on his son’s soccer field, I politely explained that I didn’t believe him.

“Bullshit.” (Okay, fine. Not that politely.)

“No, really! They’re here. Come on, I’ll show you.”

And so we followed him around on a balmy winter night in Southern Florida, looking for imaginary owls. I kept waiting for my cousin to prompt me and Rand to start digging in the dirt, knowing that when we were up to our elbows in moist, Floridian soil, he’d erupt into giggles and scream, “What are you doing? There aren’t any burrowing owls in Florida.”

But then, we saw them. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, we saw them. Burrowing owls. In a burrow.

The burrows are fenced off so the kids playing soccer don't step on them.

-

I'm pretty sure this little guy was thoroughly annoyed with me. It's hard to tell, since owls always look pissed off.

-

“No way,” I said, staring in disbelief at the small, yellow-eyed bird near our feet. “You were serious. There actually are burrow owls.”

“Of course,” my cousin replied.

And without missing a beat, he added, “Why didn’t you believe me?”

-

I know. Glamorous, right?  I got to hobnob with Idaho’s elite and get outbid on art created by 6-year-olds. In all fairness, the event was lovely (Ballgowns. Tuxedos. IDAHO. Do not ask more of life.) and when we left, we found that whoever was working coat check had placed little tubes of expensive hand cream everyone’s pockets. They smelled wonderful and looked like something you’d find in the regular-priced section of Anthropologie (which is literally the fanciest place I can think of). I realized they were TSA-compliant (less than 3oz) and they’d easily fit in my toiletry bag, so I figured I’d take them home with me.

Damn it. I just realized that I now can't re-gift these to any of my friends who read the blog. Poop.

Of course, I’d left my massive purse at coat check as well, but I didn’t think to look through it to see if anyone had slipped anything in there. I mean, why would they? Besides, my purse had been with my coat, and a lady only has so much lotion she can put on her skin before she gets the hose again.

When we got to the airport to head back to Seattle, Rand handed me my boarding pass, which I promptly misplaced (this a trait I inherited from my mother. She can literally lose something before you are done telling her the significance of whatever it is and why she shouldn’t lose it). I frantically began searching through my purse, and there, at the bottom of my huge satchel, I felt something.

“What the fuh …?”

It was a huge tube of lotion. Like, HUGE. Roughly twice the size of the other two that had been nestled in our coat pockets, and literally as BIG AS MY TOOTHPASTE:

The tube on the bottom is 4.7 oz, so I'm guessing the lotion is, oh, I'd know ... WAY OVER THE TSA LIMIT.

-

That quarter is there not for scale, but rather because I like to show off my wealth.

-

Now, obviously the folks at coat check had no idea that we were going to take a flight the very next day, and it was a lovely gesture to give us such a nice gift, but still. It seems like if you are going to start sneaking things into purses, you might want to give folks fair warning (Like, “There’s a surprise in your bag from us!” But you know, less sexual and creepy sounding). After all, my purse is roughly the size of a couch cushion. I can’t find things that I put in there, much less what someone else stashed without my knowledge.

I stood, just on the other side of airport security, somewhat freaked out. If I hadn’t lost my boarding pass (which I found, thankfully) and hadn’t rummaged into my purse, and hadn’t landed upon the huge tube of lotion, I might have found myself in a huge mess.

“Ma’am, is this hand cream yours?”

“What? No. I’ve never seen that before in my life.”

“It was in your bag.”

“It was what? Oh, yeah! I left my purse unattended last night. Someone must have put it in there without my knowledge or consent.”

At which point, an ill-tempered TSA agent would have treated me to a  a strip search and possibly a colonoscopy.

I know that the people at the event meant well. I know it was a nice gesture. And I truly love fancy hand creams and sweet smelling sundries (plus, dude, they’re pretty damn pricey). But still, Dick Move, Coat Check People. I don’t care how expensive health care is in this country. My next pelvic exam is coming from my doctor, and NOT from some underpaid agent working the security line.

“Where on earth did you get that?” I imagine someone will ask of the parka/rollerblade ensemble I am rocking.

“Oh, you know,” I will reply casually, “I picked it up in Europe.” And then they will all die of jealousy right before my eyes.

This of course, is never the case. Fashion rarely, if ever, translates across international lines. The instant I cross the border into the states, whatever treasure lurking in my suitcase will transform from “totally hip and envy-inspiring” to “exclusively appropriate for Halloween”. And it will usually inspire a conversation more along these lines:

“Where did you get that thing?”

“Europe.”

“Take it off. It looks like you were dressed by a five-year-old who hates you.”

And I will sadly toss my miniskirt oven-mitt on the give-away pile. Later, some poor soul at the Goodwill will look at it quizzically and perhaps even try it on, after which they will weep inconsolably for days and not know why.

This was precisely what happened when I went shopping in Barcelona a few months back. Based on my later purchases, I had evidently been looking for an outfit with the following attributes:

• A crotch hovering somewhere around my shins.
• Pockets conveniently located on the backs of my knees.
• A fold-over waistband, which creates just the slightest impression that I may or may not be with child.
• All for the low, low price of about 5 Euros ($40 U.S.)!

It seemed like an impossible task. I would never find an article of clothing misguided and ill-wrought enough to meet my needs. I had all but given up, and decided to spend my money on tasteful pair of silver earrings, when I saw them:

Bingo!

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Burgundy harem yoga bottoms. Yeah.

Seriously, it looks like I’m smuggling a toddler in my pants. WTF, Everywhereist?

I’m constantly amazed by how efficient and logical things are across the pond. Like how, in the London subway, everyone stands on one side of the escalators and the people who want to race up or down do so on the other side. There is quite literally a passing lane on the escalator. This is in stark contrast to say, how we ride escalators here in America: we cram on as though it’s the last lifeboat leaving a sinking ship, fumbling with seventeen or so shopping bags, two coats, and some small animal in a pet-carrying case (let’s go with a chinchilla) and then we stand, utterly motionless, until we reach the top or bottom of the escalator. We then throw ourselves onto terra firma, after which everyone stands around looking as though they’ve just survived a war because THE STAIRS WERE MOVING.

I’m not pointing fingers. I do it, too. Escalators are SCARY. Plus, why use your muscles when the machines will do the work for you? It makes no sense.

But that’s just one of the many miraculously efficient things that go on in London. The subway system, though a Victorian relic that should prove to be an unnavigatable maze for any directionally challenged American (hi!) is surprisingly easy to figure out. Everyone is very polite, no one ever cuts in line, and if you look the least bit lost, ten young men with delightful accents will magically appear and give you directions, all the while calling you “love”. It’s really glorious.

Really, there’s only one thing I’ve encountered in the entire capitol that doesn’t meet these same standards of efficiency and charm: the damn showers.

Take a look at the bathroom in the last hotel we stayed at in Bloomsbury. It was actually a lovely place – breakfast was plentiful, the staff was helpful, and our room was bigger than a broom closet. But the shower looks like it was designed by someone who’s never actually had to take one. In lieu of a shower curtain, they have a pane of glass that covers half of the tub. Directly opposite this was a lovely little shelf where you could place all of your sundries that you wished to saturate with water.

It was literally impossible to bathe without sending several dozen gallons of water on to the bathroom floor (note the copious quantities of towels everywhere). I took to crouching right up against the wall underneath the shower head, trying to not spray water everywhere, wondering how a place that makes GERMANY LOOK DISORGANIZED hasn’t figured out that water gets things wet.

It’s not like shower curtains are incredibly pricey or complex. They’re plastic taps that hang from the ceiling. DO YOU HERE ME, LONDON? YOU ARE FROM THE COUNTRY THAT INVENTED EATING CAKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY. DO YOU KNOW HOW BRILLIANT THAT IS? Seriously. This is child’s play by comparison.

I suppose I shouldn’t pick on the English exclusively for this. Other countries have missed the boat when it comes to shower curtains, too. I’ve been in hotels and hostels in Italy, Sweden, Norway, and Spain that have had similar arrangements. I once encountered a shower in Hungary that consisted of – I kid you not – a drain in the middle of the bathroom floor, and a hose. But for some reason, I expect a little more of the English. They’re so damn reasonable. Couldn’t they have figured out that water doesn’t stay where you ask it to?

Seriously, WTF, London. You’re better than this.

And occasionally, those signs are hilarious.

According to this one, spotted in a Portland drug store, a lot of folks in Oregon are searching for douches (I know of several in Seattle I would be delighted to send their way). And a good number of folks in Idaho are evidently looking for beverages whose popularity peaked sometime during the Reagan administration:

I can't decide if this is brilliance, or madness.

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The mix of terms, ranging from generic to oddly-specific (Shasta? Really?) was wholly unexpected, but I can’t fault the store for it. Clearly, the good shoppers of M&W Markets in Boise know precisely what they want, and many are fortunate enough to live in a world where they can have it. Their desires hang above for all to see, illuminated by the heavens. It may be cryptic, but it’s honest. I imagine the aisles in the store of my heart would be no less befuddling to an outsider as well:

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But as long as we all know where to find the things that sustain us, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.