A crowded international flight. I am flying to Italy.

I paid an arm and a kidney for these tickets. And we are going to be on this plane for 10 hours. Ten hours is a long time on a plane, but thankfully, the plane is also cramped and miserable.

There are many non-Americans in the cabin with us. In fact, there are hardly any Americans on this flight at all.

There is a passenger behind me, for instance, talking loudly in either Polish, or Russian, or some other spit intensive Slavic language. As a result, my neck, shoulders and hair are covered in a fine spray of international saliva.

At one point, I turned around and asked the man to quit spitting on me, but he just spoke something in friendly Spittish. Then he smiled.

“You’re spitting on my neck,” I politely explained.

He smiled and said something foreign.

“Spitting,” I clarified, speaking in fluent hand gestures. “On my neck. Your sputum. It is on my physical person.”

Thumbs up.

Meantime, there are announcements coming overhead, recited by the flight attendant in rapid-fire Italian. And I’m getting a little nervous because I have been slacking off on studying my basic Italian before this trip. And now I only have 10 hours to become fluent.

So I open my little book of useful phrases and get to work.

Right away, I learn that “buona notte” means “good night.” “Bonjourno,” means “red passenger bus.” And saying “ciao bella” after kissing the tips of your fingers and gesturing happily, is the traditional way of saying, literally, “I am an American tourist.”

There are other useful phrases I learn in my book. Such as, “Non so dove mi trovo,” which means, “I don’t know where I am.”

And “Cosa vuol dire che non esiste il tè dolce?” “What do you mean there is no sweet tea?”

And of course, “Mi stai sputando addosso.” Translated: “You’re spitting on me, sir.”

By Hour Four, our seating section is the most popular spot on the airplane. There is a constant single-file line waiting to defile the lavatory with unspeakable digestive horrors.

After each passenger bathroom visit our section begins to stink. It’s as though the altitude has stimulated the lower intestinal tracts of the entire plane. In a few minutes, the plane smells like a portajohn at a bluegrass festival.

Then, the flight attendants says it’s time for dinner.

Thank heaven. We all get excited because we are starving. And if they weren’t going to feed us soon, we were this close to eating members of the crew.

Next, the attendants pass around supper, which consists of little paper bowls of potato gnocchi with carrots and an unidentified brown vegetable.

I’ll admit, I had low expectations for dinner, but I was actually surprised by how truly godawful organic matter could taste. The food was almost impressively bad. This was not just crummy airline food. This took real effort.

Then the lights dim, and we in the cabin are getting ready for sleep. I recline my chair as far back as it will go: One seventy-third of a micrometer. I try to get some rest.

My wife is out like a candle. So are many other passengers.

But I’m having trouble sleeping inasmuch as there is a passenger across the aisle from me who is shuffling a deck of cards incessantly. Every time I am about to nod off, he snaps the deck loudly, and it sounds like I’m at the blackjack table at the Beau Rivage.

I want to lean over and ask why a grown man is shuffling cards on an international flight in the middle of the night. Is he a professional closeup magician? Is he a sales representative for Bicycle? Is he the main character from a Kenny Rogers song?

I can see the other passengers looking at him. They all wear the same expressions I’m wearing. We are all having vivid fantasies about throwing this man from the aircraft. But then I would never do that. Not after what I paid for these tickets.

Italy, here we come.

Ciao bella.