The oxygen masks are flinging about my head as I try to grab one, I can see children around me choking as the cabin loses pressure, I am freaking out, why do the flight attendants always say to help yourself first and then others? People are screaming, the planes nose is pointed way down, drinks are spilling everywhere and people start to cry and pray and frantically dial their cell phones to loved ones. My palms are sweaty and I wipe them on my shorts, I promise God I won’t masturbate ever again. Then the bumps stop the plane straightens out and I let out a sigh of relief, no one even notices my fear or my joy that we are all still alive. I wonder if this is what fear of flying means? When on earth did this happen to me? I never used to be like this, I was never a frequent flier, poor college students and writers cannot afford to be frequent fliers, I flew once in a while, but I don’t remember having little freak out sessions while wondering which plane crash scene we would resemble as we nose dived to our certain deaths. I just hope we die on impact, Alive scared me out of survival and eating other humans scares the crap out of me. How the hell is everyone so calm? Didn’t they just hear that sound, that f—ing vibration coming from the wings, I want to get up and form a little prayer circle, I stay put trying to skip any songs in my shuffle which God may consider evil. Dr Dre is out, Motley Crew talks about women too much, ah Bluegrass perfect wholesome, shit they are singing about Jesus – we are really screwed now. God, I will never look at women again – I can imagine him up their on his cloud filled throne laughing his ass off calling over some of his interns to look at the scene of me with my white knuckle grip of the armrest during some slight turbulence promising that I would not look at girls – that’s how they get entertainment. Then at an appropriate time some girl with low cut jeans with a slight amount of thong showing gets up to use the bathroom and the plane suddenly loses a wing. While you the easy flier is sitting in your seat with your seatbacks and tray tables stowed to the upright and lock position, reading the Sky Mall catalog and wondering why you never bought the solar powered nose hair trimmer, I am analyzing every sound, creak, bump, elevation change, speed change and wing bounce. Every noise no matter how slight puts me into this Yom Kippur mode where I swear off everything from reading porn to not waiting the full 6 hours between milk and meat, for all I know if it got really hairy I would start beating my chest and refusing the complimentary drinks with those ice cubs that are impossible to crunch on.
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