Sometimes I look at my socks suspiciously.

And before you tell me to just relax because socks are non-entities after all, that I should let them off the hook in terms of motive or really anything sinister, let me tell you why. When my feet are cold–which is often enough, especially in the winter–it feels more like socks are simply a way to entrap the cold to stay wrapped around my feet forever. Like a small soft refrigerator that has no plug and thankfully doesn’t still smell faintly of rotten meat because of that one time you left for the summer and they turned off your electricity.

And you know when the sock refrigerator seems to really come into effect?

On the plane.

Which is where I was today, but this time the sock refrigerator wasn’t the worst part.

The very worst part was when I was standing in a long line for the bathroom on the plane and every part of my body was letting me know that I had to go. In the very worst way. But of course everybody else and their mother had to go in the very worst way also. And of course all five hundred or okay, so five people in front of me took their sweet southern don’t you dare rush time in that tiny bathroom. To the point where I didn’t really know if I could make it anymore.

But I couldn’t just double over.

Not in that tiny aisle and not when the stewardess needed to serve the beverages or at least needed to be able to serve the beverages in a properly clear aisle. And I also couldn’t very well just start to scream or even just crap my pants, you know? Something about society not thinking it proper for a grown human to do any of the above, though if I were to choose, I would say that blocking the aisle would be the least offensive and would highly recommend that as opposed to the other options listed. You know, if it came down to it.

But because I couldn’t do those things I simply ignored how I felt, however strongly it was raging; instead I managed to look very polite and even smile at other people, answering the mundane questions of life as they posed them and all the while wondering if this is how it would be for me forever.

And no, I mean I eventually went to the bathroom, thank God, but what I am referring to is the whole smiling and talking despite how you feel thing. The whole aspect of feeling relief in the fact that you are reading a book and letting the tears roll, content to let others believe that you are simply wrapped up in some well written story, when really those tears are the story.

And you can’t see the end but God, you hope it’s good. Or at least better. No, let’s go with that first gut instinct and keep hoping for a solid good.

And one last thing about the socks. I have learned that you can really neutralize the refrigerator effect by wearing slippers, preferably the kind that are yellow and a gift from your brother. But then the desire to have warm feet on the plane battles it out with the desire to not be the kind of person who wears fuzzy yellow slippers in public. In my opinion that’s a slippery slope and who knows, maybe this eyesore started out with just a pair of yellow slippers worn innocently enough on an airplane.

Now that’s just not a risk I am willing to take.

Suffice it to say, so far my vanity has won.