Mosquito.

Kelsey and I were in line at the Krakow Airport in Poland waiting to board our plane back to Dublin. As we were standing there, a mosquito flew up and landed on the back of the neck of the man standing in front of us. Kelsey, who was in front of me, started stuttering 'excuse me's and 'sir's, but was too quiet to get his attention. She almost committed to smacking him in the back of the neck, but then panicked and just ended up pointing at it and stammering some more. I kept saying "kill it! kill it!" but she just couldn't bring herself to smack a stranger. By this time a few people around us had become aware of what was going on as well. Suddenly the man turned around and grabbed the back of his neck, obviously noticing the bite, and everyone who was involved had a good laugh about the ordeal.

Afterward Kelsey, the man with the mosquito bite, the old man who was standing behind us, and I had a discussion about what we would do in that situation, now that we could think about it, and what we would want done to us. It really was quite a dilemma:

Do you hit a stranger? What if he hits back? Can you imagine how confused you would be if you were suddenly smacked in the back of the neck at the airport? I don't know about you, but I'm already on edge at the airport usually, and if I was suddenly struck in the back of the neck my first reaction would be to freak out.

Or do you get his attention as quickly as possible to inform him of the bug? That was Kelsey's route, and it was quite unsuccessful.

Because Kelsey was pointing at it, unable to smack him, we even discussed the option of simply pushing your finger onto it to squish it, rather than smack it. There was an immediate and unanimous agreement that pointing your finger into the mosquito on the stranger's neck was the most awkward choice of all, and none of us would do that or want that done to us.

In the end the four of us ended up with the same preferences: Although it would be confusing at first, we would want to be smacked. We would want the mosquito squashed immediately with limited physical interaction with the stranger. However, interestingly enough, we also all agreed that all of us were too cowardly to smack the bug off of a stranger ourselves. Even though it was a humorous discussion, it left us all pretty paranoid until we boarded the plane - we knew there were mosquitos around, and if one landed on us we now knew that we couldn't count on anyone around us to kill it.