15. March 2008, British Airways Flight 178
I have never been legitimately afraid of flying. As a young child, my father buckled me snugly into the backseat of his Cessna Skylane 182, the Ford Pinto of general aviation. There is no bathroom, no Stewardess button, and no in-flight meal other than perhaps tortilla chips and diet coke. (We did steal a few SkyMall catalogues from a Delta 777 once, scrunching them into the back pockets of the Cessna’s seats as a joke. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Skylane made an appearance in the SkyMall catalogue itself. If you can already afford 800 threadcount sheets, a life-size R2D2, virtual reality goggles and an upside-down tomato garden, what’s an airplane?)
Truly, it’s an airborne golfcart- small and bumpy. Of course, when you’re only flying at 120 knots at 4,000 feet, bumps are standard, along with the occasional skydiver or ambitious Canadian goose. As I write this, I am God-knows-how-high over what I assume to be Greenland, in a London-bound 747. The TV screen in front of me is broken, and I slept through the in-flight meal (two strikes against you, British Airways). Between the nauseating turbulence and the muscle relaxers calming my spastic back, it’s a miracle I can read my own handwriting.
For the first time, I’m a little afraid to fly. I keep glancing out the window at the wing, shaking along with the rest of the plane, and that left engine looks like it could easily drop right off. Those rivets don’t suggest the the superglue of industrial aviation… more like the duct tape, nay, masking tape of industiral aviation.
The plane is a frozen heap. A curious polar bear makes his way into the cabin, easily ripping through the poorly constructed aircraft with his massive polar claws. Once inside, he enjoys a passengercicle. Mmm, American tourist. Just the right crunch.
What a twisted way to give back to the polar bears after carelessly snatching their habitat away as a result of global warming.
Knut, der baby Eisbär, cracks a smile and continues gnawing destructively at whatever object he’s chosen to teeth on as opposed to, say, the Berlin Zookeepers’ forearms.
Sometimes, when I get scared, I try to think of haiku as a distraction, but there’s no way for me to cram all of this fear and all of these polar bears into a measely 17 syllables. Poetry didn’t exactly do the trick for me this morning at 5:30 on the Subway, either. “Petals on a Wet Black Bough” my ass, Ezra Pound. Try hungover, cat-calling Eastern European men and an exquisite selection of the city’s homeless schizophrenic. I told one character about my boyfriend’s Taxidermy business in Long Island. I have never been to Long Island. I have no boyfriend. I also have one less man sitting next to me on the Jamaica-bound E train, breathing heavily and telling me I have pretty eyes. So, you tell me it wasn’t worth it.
These are the details I leave out when my grandmother asks me about living in Manhattan.
I guess my transportation phobias are the opposite of most normal peoples’. All that really says about me is that I flew Silver Spoon Airways as a child and seldom had to take a bus. Perhaps I am the passengercicle to the polar bears of the MTA. It all evens out in the end.
Manchmals denk’ ich an/
Knut, der baby Eisbär/
Wenn ich gefolgt werd’.
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