I took a deep breath, leaned back, and stared at the golden curtain of hair cascading in front of me. I glanced down at my tray table, then at my coffee stirrer, and a mischievous idea formed.<\/p>\n
I reached into my carry-on and pulled out a pack of gummy candies I\u2019d bought at the airport. Slowly, carefully, I began to weave a few of them into her strands\u2014nothing sticky, just enough to catch her attention later.<\/p>\n
Then I took one of the small paper napkins, tore it into tiny pieces, and began to tuck them gently into the waves of her hair, one by one. A popcorn kernel from my snack bag went in next.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t angry\u2014I was focused. Calm. This was my new movie.<\/p>\n
After about five minutes, I sat back and admired my work. Her hair was now a collection of random bits\u2014snacks, paper, even the foil seal from my water bottle\u2014woven into a royal mess.<\/p>\n
And then, as if on cue, she adjusted in her seat and finally noticed the tugging. She reached back, touched her hair\u2026 and froze.<\/p>\n
She started pulling at it, confused. She turned to look at me.<\/p>\n
I smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou dropped something,\u201d I said sweetly.<\/p>\n
Her face turned red, a mix of shock and embarrassment. Without a word, she yanked her hair back over her seat and tied it in a knot so tight it looked like a rope.<\/p>\n
For the rest of the flight, my screen was clear. Sometimes, all it takes is a bit of creativity to reclaim your space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I took a deep breath, leaned back, and stared at the golden curtain of hair cascading in front of me. I glanced down at my tray table, then at my coffee stirrer, and a mischievous idea formed. I reached into my carry-on and pulled out a pack of gummy candies I\u2019d bought at the airport. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
And I got to watch my movie\u2014in peace.<\/em><\/p>\n