or,
Jefe’s only real phobia.
Anyone who has known me for a very long period of time (by this I mean more than an hour or so) knows that I fancy myself a born story teller. I am never happier than when I have an audience to listen to me run my frickin’ mouth. My stories are long, usually prefaced with bits of other stories, but entertaining and well-structured. They also tend to repeat themselves, so if you’ve known me for a very, very long time (more than a couple of weeks) then you have heard some of my stories more than once. Or twice.
This is one of those stories. I am afraid to fly. Terrified of it, really. I get white knuckeld on take-offs and landings. My mind races on airplanes with horrible scenarios of fiery explosions or terrorist atttacks. One of my few recurring nightmares is of being on a crashing plane, standing in the aisle with the cockpit door open, watching the ground rush up at me. The mid-air collision scene in Fight Club nearly gives me panic attacks. Typically, to endure air travel of any length at all, I need to get drunk. As a child, I delighted in the excitement of a trip to Houston to visit my two best friends, or a flight to Colorado to see my Grandparents. I insisted on the window seat, and was glued to it the way some children get glued to television. I watched the tiny trucks roll down the pencil-line highways, I marveled at the chaotic asymmetry of farms lands and grasslands, I lived and died with the rush of acceleration on take-off.
Ah, to be a kid again. What an idiot I was.
Because, see, here’s the thing. They tell you that flying is safer than driving. This idea that airtravel is safer than cars is based on many different things, including the exhaustive safety precautions taken by airlines, strict regulations mandated by the government, even the complete lack of drunk drivers in the air (we hope). For that matter, everyone driving around upstairs has loads of practice and is really good at it. Airline pilots don’t cut each other off in traffic, try to put on make-up in the rearview, forget to put oil in their cars, steal your parking space, or get road rage.
See, but my thing is they also have NO ROOM FOR ERROR! There are no fender bender’s at 37,000 feet going 700 miles an hour. You don’t have airline ‘accidents’. Up there, you make one little mistake, or have one tiny mechanical failure, and EVERYBODY DIES. If you’re lucky, they scoop up your ashes with a spoon.
I just got to England for Mark and Janet’s wedding, and I couldn’t be happier to be here. We really love that guy, and his lady is amazing, and I am really happy for them.
I’m also very glad to be on the ground in one piece.