Do you know what that is? No? Consider yourself lucky. What those are, are little styrofoam balls called Micro-Beads and they are found in a lot of those travel neck pillows that people have. I discovered what was inside mine the hard way on a tour of Italy.
I think it was halfway through the trip, somewhere around Florence or Tuscany when it happened. I remember my black neck pillow had fallen to the floor and gotten stuck. I was late getting off the bus, so I tugged as hard as I could, and it still wasn’t coming free. Right at that moment my mother asked me what was taking so long, so I just left it and headed to dinner. I completely forgot about it until a day or two later everyone started complaining about these weird small white beads that had appeared.
And due to static electricity they were getting stuck to everything. Bags, clothing, blankets, seats. The White Menace was everywhere. Still I didn’t realize what it was, until as I was leaving I noticed my pillow still stuck under one of the seats. I made one last effort to get it out…and it ripped open completely spilling more white beads everywhere. I tried to capture as many as I could, but the clinged to everything but me. Giving up I stuck the remanence of the fabric in my pocket and and threw it away later. Everyone was so mad about it, but luckily no one ever found out it was me. (And I was sure to tip the driver extra at the end for having to clean it up.) I never did carry a micro-bead pillow with me anywhere ever again.
Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
Leave a Reply