Now having said all this, I will cheerfully admit that I’m a nut magnet.

What’s a nut magnet, you say?

Well, glad you asked.

A nut magnet is someone who attracts nuts. Meaning crazy people. Crazy people who are usually total strangers but who nevertheless come up and start talking. And usually, they will continue talking until I gracefully bow out, which is not as easy as it sounds.

Usually, these people are not technically crazy. Perhaps eccentric is the word I’m looking for. Or maybe eccentric on steroids.

Like the art museum guard who tried to argue that the first US president was Black.

Or the high school kid who approached me in the ocean off a North Carolina beach, wanting to talk about the results of Lee Oswald’s gun paraffin test.

Or the man I met who believed that Christina Aguilera was in love with him, and was secretly communicating with him through her music videos. (His name was Ron. I think he’s one who despite being relatively harmless probably was seriously nuts. Most of the others are just, well, interesting).

So how does this relate to air travel? Easy. Because if you’re the type who attracts nuts, there’s no better place to corner you than on an airplane.