Are you expecting a story about the mile high club? Sex in a tiny airplane toilet where there is barely enough room for one person to play sudoku? No thanks – sorry to disappoint you!

Walking in on a penis

On one of my trips back to lebanon, I sat next to this sweet, super talkative veiled lady from Beirut. She kept asking me question after another after another. She explained how important it is for me to get married, how family is the most important thing in the world, and that a life without a wife and kids was not worth living. If I had to rate her on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the most conservative, she would score 102. The marriage talk gave me an urge to escape and take a piss. I was in such a rush to get away, I walked into the tiny toilet, closed the door, but must have half locked it. Next thing you know as I’m peeing, the door swings open, I turn around, penis in hand, to find my new friend looking at me in shock. I may have peed on her a tiny bit, I’m not quite sure. It took me a while to gather the nerve to get back to my seat. The good news is that when I eventually got back, we didn’t speak another word!

Selfie taking psycho

On a trip to Rome to go to my best friend’s wedding I was next to this American girl from Boston. She sat down and immediately looked at me with this ginormous smile.

“HI!! I’m Sarah.” she says loudly.

“Hi. I’m Joey” I replied. I’m not one to easily get over excited.

“Let’s take a selfie!!”

“Um ok, cool”. At this point I feel like I’m going to have a fun plane trip to Rome with this bubbly girl who’s maybe a bit too happy but that’s ok, happy is good.

So she takes about 52 selfies of us till she’s satisfied with the result. Then her thumbs are frantically typing on her phone.

“My Mom says you’re handsome” she looks at me with her mouth so open you would think there’s an apple in the center stretching her jaws up and down.

“This relationship is moving a bit too fast for me” I tell her jokingly.

She totally ignores me and continued with the cell phone activity. A few minutes later she looks up at me with droopy eyes.

“I think I pissed off my boyfriend.”

“Why, what happened?”

“I sent him our selfie and he got really angry”

At this point I start to realize she’s a bit too weird for me.

She starts telling me more about her boyfriend:

“He has weird mood swings ever since he got out of jail. We broke up last time I went to Italy to visit my relatives and he followed me all the way there. He caught me making out with this Italian guy and punched the daylight out of him. There’s another guy I like now in Sicily and I may get engaged to him.”

If that didn’t make sense to you, good. It didn’t make any sense to me either. I wasn’t totally thrilled that this ex con had a picture of me and the temper of a bull.

She then asked the people behind us if we could all take a selfie before take off. It was an awkward selfie that nobody really enjoyed.

“Ok I’m gonna take my medication now. Good night”. She pulls out xanax pills, drowns them, and proceeds to pass out only to wake up right before we land and…yes…take one more selfie.

The lady can puke

On a four or so hour leg from Singapore to Hong Kong, I sat next to this very old lady. She seemed uncomfortable from the moment we took off. She was rocking her head back and forth continuously a bit like an autistic child. A bit later she tells the hostess that she’s nauseous. The hostess points her to the bag that she can use. She pulls it out and puts it back in. Five minutes later, she throws up……in my lap. I felt really bad for her as she appologized a lot. I smelled like shit and spent an hour in the bathroom cleaning. Eventually I sat back down wet and tried hard to ignore the smell. The lady still didn’t look good though. The rocking continued which eventually led her to get the barf bag and she opened it this. One minute, two minutes, ten minutes passed and nothing happened. Right then and there she throws up again…half in my lap half in hers!! #%%^€£<|*?! I lost it this time. The bag was right there, and it was open! Why? The cabin crew moved her up front this time. The bad news though was that I had another 12 hours from Hong Kong to Boston. It was a good reason to shop for a new pair of jeans….and shower using a sink.

The heart attack (not quite)

At the beginning of a work trip from Boston to London, I had several cups of coffee to try to keep awake. In those days I hadn’t yet realized the crazy effect that caffeine has on my body. So I get on the plane and suddenly get heart palpitations – nonstop thumping like I was just about to get a heart attack. In typical Joey style wisdom I decide to tell the hostess about it. I tell her that she should just be aware that I’m having heart palpitations, and that I’m ok now but just so they know in case I need help later. She moved me to first class and lied me down flat and took my vitals. They sent the information to a doctor in the ground who told them that everything seemed ok, but that I should rest. I found it cool especially because this was before the time when we had internet on planes. Even cooler was that I got to stay lying down in first class the whole trip. Virgin Atlantic is my favorite airline and this made me like it even  more. Want a free upgrade? You may want to try this.