It’s So My Mom.

So I know I’m always complaining about issues my mother has saddled me with, implying that it’s her fault that I sometimes seem unfit for the non-loony world. But sometimes when a prism shifts, you see it in a new light.

I’ve often lamented the paranoia my hypochondriac mom has bequeathed me. And on a business trip last week it was in rare form.

In fact, it started running rampant from my first flight—not surprising, actually, as the fear of flying is something I’ve cultivated on my very own. I also lay claim to my very overactive imagination, which conjures all sorts of Final Destination-worthy scenarios that could bring planes down. Like birds flying at 30,000 feet.

But a much more realistic fear in light of both near and not-so-recent acts of terrorism is crazy plane passengers. And being that I was New York-bound last week, there was a motley cabin crew. And one of them had a turbin.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and I am ashamed to cop to the prejudice, being closer to a Democrat that the dreadful alternative and having dated a Syrian boy for four years. I tried to calm myself at the scene, reassuring myself, from my experience with my former Middle Eastern family, that only Indians wore turbins, and Indians aren’t terrorists at all!

But what about Pakistanis? I tried desperately to remember their headgear.

So I scoped the dude out extensively in the terminal. If this is sounding worse and worse, rest assured that I literally did the exact same thing to my own kind, a suspicious looking cholo (Spanish for thug), at the San Antonio airport last month. I intercepted him to ask if he had a brother named Mike, just so I could tell, from his response, tone and texture, whether I was dealing with potential shoebomber material on my connection flight to Dallas. (I swore I had heard someone page “Anthony Padilla,” and wasn’t sure if airport personnel were as up to speed on their terrorists as I.)

Back to the New York trip. I had done my homework in the terminal enough to assure myself that this guy was more Ghandi than Genghis (a stretch, but they both hailed from the eastern hemisphere).

That is, until he started hanging around the bathroom toward the end of the flight, “innocently” plying our stewardess at her station for apple juice. I was sure he was just biding his time so he could step inside the lavatory to mix up whatever he had brought in tiny parcels that had inevitably gone unchecked in our lax security screenings (which, by the way, did earth my suspicious looking box of business cards).

There was nothing I could do. I sat not in my seat at that point, but in the vacant back aisle, breath held, listening for my moment of intervention—tackling, plastic door storming, whatever needed to be done. I was sure that once that swirly-headed man went into the bathroom, he wasn’t coming out until he had everything together for our own little D-Day party.

And then he came out, took his apple juice, and returned to his seat.

Of course.

It’s times like this when I question the very thread of my sanity. Like, what witches brew of my mother’s overzealous caution mixed with my own rampant imagination has rendered me useless to this world? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

But a few days later, everything became crystallized. Like the food allergies that give the otherwise uberimportant immune system a bad name, my fixating on my momentary hyperventilations is missing the forest for the trees. What I’m getting at is that this paranoia is useful.

You know that fictional (or maybe fictionalized) character in Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones”? That would never be or have been me. You know why? I’m extremely observant.

Mother always told me to be aware of my surroundings, and by God, it stuck. Like last Thursday, when I had my first taste of New York City crackpots.

I was sitting in Dean & Deluca in the Borders at Columbus Circle mall, the only place besides the overstuffed Starbucks that had a free wireless connection (for a $12 latte and quiche). Over the course of my zealous e-mail answering and article writing, I became vaguely aware of an older man at a table across—but not too close—from me. He was checking me out.

No big deal, right? Until the person at the table to my immediate left left. And Old Man Creepy slid in there to replace her.

Most people probably wouldn’t have bat an eyelash at that, but it struck me as weird. Struck me as weirder when I caught the guy’s gaze looking not toward the book where it was pointed, but sneaking frequently at my face, and mis-matched stockinged-feet.

It was time to go, I decided. I hurried to the bathroom before my departure, then—drat!—realized I had left my scarf at the table.

But I needn’t have gone all the way back there to retrieve it, because Old Man Foot Fetish was waiting patiently outside with it when I reemerged. I thanked him and dashed down one set of parallel down elevators, turning back every second to make sure he wasn’t following me. And goddammit (sorry mom) if the old fart didn’t pass me on the floor below to bid me a forced friendly adieu.

I watched him pretend to go out the glass doors to the outside world, feigning another escalator descent. But I didn’t descend. I waited to watch until he went all the way past my view, into a world with other possible harassees. But right before he would have disappeared from view and into that world, he turned around to come back in—and stopped short when he saw me staring.

Who knows what this guy was up to. A mugging, a serial killing, a raping, or some harmless spank bank material. Thanks to my mom and the screws loose in my brain, I’m never going to find out.