Oh the humanity!

Here I am to harp again in one of my many rants (targets of which include but are not limited to: school, stress, the opposite sex, bad food, shallow thinking, and of course, airplanes).

I am flying out to California on Wednesday, which is merely the day after tomorrow. I am in somewhat of a panic about this. I wish I could find I way to express my abject and consistent fear of being in a large tin can which – after filling up with men in business suits having “important” conversations on tacky phones about LAN connections and conventions and ways to blow their company’s travel budget, gum-smacking beach blondes holding only a designer purse and the latest edition of Cosmopolitan, seedy-looking characters with odd baggage who seem to always stare, older women carrying a massive leather reticule full of every odd and end known to man, including the obligatory Dean Koontz novel and a picture of their grandchild, and little families with grape juice in sippy bottles, a diaper bag, and a father looking so domestic you stare with raised eyebrow – I will enter, backpack in tow, cell phone in pocket, death wish ostensibly on brain.

Because, you see, it’s not that I “don’t like” flying. It’s not that the airport “stresses me out” or that the whole traveling process drags on longer than a petition for money in church, or even that, as makes the most sense, I don’t particularly like the idea of hurtling through the air like sardines packed into a can and lobbed with all one’s might into the sky, hitting several miles high – “this is your Captain speaking, we have now reached our cruising altitude of six miles up from the ground, a hundred miles from your home, and several million light years from anything you hold sacred, comfortable, or real. So sit back, have a small plastic cup filled with some watery carbonated beverage that is, of course, complimentary, and enjoy the ride,” because who doesn’t like looking out the window and seeing an entire state in one glance, and knowing that if anything went wrong they would turn into a fireball, and, best yet, knowing that they have no control of whether that happens, and, if it doesn’t, knowing that they will find the aforementioned sardine can falling back down in a beautiful arc and somehow gracing the runway with the greatest of ease, which, every time it actually works and a plane lands without smashing into a billion bits, is in the world according to Tonia, the greatest miracle since the Wedding at Cana and maybe since the invention of Penicillin, but don’t quote me on that?

Speaking of pharmaceuticals, the fact that I will most definitely be under the influence of some highly tranquilizing substances (and trying to find a dosage between hiding in the bathroom as the plane leaves and walking onto the wretched thing and then passing out in a Sleeping Beauty slumber that would not allow for things like breathing or, even worse, grabbing my little oxygen mask should I need it at some point during the flight that we experience a drop in cabin pressure) does not change my fear – no, my all-consuming HORROR that this will happen. After all, what happiness is there greater than the anticipation of the event itself, and what fear is there greater that of facing a situation which held that wondrous feeling in it before?

Just knowing that this is going to happen a few days down the road clutches at my gut, it wrenches my soul, it shakes my fragile little body and says “WHAT THE HELL were you thinking?” It sends frigid little vibrations down my bouncing legs and to my clenching toes, it knocks a million little holes into the brain that made this absurd decision…after all, I am not a bird; I belong with my feet firmly clamped onto terra cognita, as they are now, but as they will not remain forever…because I will go through that blasted metal detector, as bleary eyed and self possessed security people question my legality, my integrity, and even my right to be there, as I slip my shoes back on, and gather my bag, and collect my ID, and check the boards to find my flight, and close my eyes, and drift away.

And then, after passing over my boarding pass to a woman either smiling like she just won a place on “The Price is Right” or who is glaring at you like you’re some insipid stowaway cockroach, and after walking down the uneven, echoing jetway, like some misbegotten member of the nobility walking to La Guillotine, I will place my things down, sit in a seat a thousand other grimy humans have rested in, I will turn off all portable electronic devices, and clutch the armrests, hoping that the soft plastic that covers them is intact and that my seat partner doesn’t hog them, and, as the plane cants down the runway, picking up speed, and then as that horrid, sickening feeling that betrays my higher sensibilities consumes my little body as I leave the ground and we canter off into the sky, in man’s most unnatural invention ever, I will pray, and chant in my head, and close my eyes and count, and wait, wait for it to be over, then upon landing I will kiss the ground, and swear never to repeat the experience, and race through Ontario International, down the escalator, into the baggage claim, and out the doors into the warm, sweet, southern California night, while I chatter with my ride and secretly, inside, plot a way back home that doesn’t engage such awkward means.