HERE’S TO OUR FEARS
Plane ride proves to be a great place to unpack some cumbersome personal baggage
I made a new friend, last week. I don’t know her name, where she lives or most anything about her. But we shared the imagined terror of what was never a life or death experience.
The phrase “we’ve been delayed due to poor visibility” is not what a nervous flyer likes to hear moments before takeoff. How will the pilot see the drones some maggot teenagers will inevitably decide to launch just as we take off ? What about the flocks of geese that will most definitely find their way into our flight path? What if the air traffic controller is having a bad day and guides us right into a collision with a 787 Dreamliner?
All thoughts are ridiculous, of course. Or maybe they’re not. But I don’t know enough — or anything — about physics to comprehend how an airplane manages to fly and stay airborne in the first place. It makes no sense to me. How can we be flying? We’re not birds!
Perhaps if I paid closer attention in high school or to the picture books my mother showed me when I was a toddler, I’d have a better comprehension of the physics of flying. If I was so inclined, I could read endless explanations or YouTube about a million videos on the topic, but like most people, I guess I prefer to live in fearful ignorance.
In any case, I become very religious every time I fly. As we take off, I bow my head, say a little prayer, promise to try to be a better person should we survive this one-hour domestic flight on a calm, sunny day.
But on this particular day last week, Hurricane Michael was wreaking havoc on the American East Coast, which I’m told caused the rainy, foggy conditions further north that delayed our flight. So when the moment of takeoff finally came, both the woman sitting next to me and I bowed our heads in unison. I smiled a little. Two of us begging for mercy has got to be better than one.
When we eventually ascended over thick clouds into a mostly calm, sunny sky, my nerves abated and I turned my attention to my downloaded Netflix, the Australian-based show, “Sisters.” My neighbour’s head was still bowed, her eyes still closed. Which was good because without yet being familiar with the content of “Sisters,” I had no idea how many, if any, sex scenes I was in for. And it’s super awkward to be sitting next to a stranger who thinks you’re a pervert for bringing softcore porn on a flight or a train.
So I was mostly in the clear until the flight attendant came by with the bar cart, at which point my neighbour raised her head and opened her eyes. Obviously, it was at that moment that one of the show’s few (relatively tame) sex scenes did present on my screen. But it hardly mattered at that point because wine was flowing into tall glasses — Merlot for her, Chardonnay for me. She looked at me, raised her glass in cheers and glanced down at my screen.
I smiled sheepishly. I’m not a pervert, I said telepathically. But I could tell she was an even more nervous flyer than I am, so I angled the screen toward her and turned on the subtitles so she could follow along. Maybe it would take her mind off her terror. Maybe she would see that this isn’t porn. Maybe we could become best friends.
She smiled and did watch, too. I filled her in on the premise of the show, explained the characters, the present situation. The combination of wine and Netflix has a truly transformative effect on the most wound-up person — it’s any wonder that so many of us dive right in after a stressful day at work. Because within moments, the two of us seemed to forget that moments earlier we were silently begging for our lives. Within moments, we were relaxed, completely distracted by our distractions.
And then, as the plane began its descent, she summoned the courage to unglue her eyes from the screen and stare out the window at the beauty that is soaring high over puffy clouds.
She would watch it that night at home, she assured me.
S’fine with me, either way. Just get me off this plane, I thought. More wine and Netflix await me at home.
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The combination of wine and Netflix has a truly transformative effect on the most wound-up person