music is my aeroplane

Strangely enough, after a lifetime of flying, I've been developing an irrational fear of it as of late.

It might be coming back to me from playing too much Flight Simulator as a kid, and honing such little finesse over the joystick that I managed to learn of every aerodynamic disaster possible. I don't know. But every time I'm in a plane and it's taking off I literally convince myself that it's "stalling" (ascending without enough speed, and falling backwards) to the point where I imagine my family and friends watching the crash coverage on the news. And then I'm wondering - how long will it take them to find out that I just died? Did I leave any kind of emergency contact with the airline? Does anyone even know I'm out of town?

So the first thing I do when I panic is look at the flight attendant's expressions. You know, to see if they're freaking out too. And I've come to notice that when experiencing turbulence, flight attendants become far more cheerful-seeming. It's funny. Which is good when you're freakin out. Just watch how overly happy and carefree your flight attendant starts to act next time the plane starts bouncing all over the place.

But according to Drew Whitelegg's "Working the Skies", turbulence related injuries cause broken bones, crushed ankles, and even occasional fatalities. "'Fly for long enough', flight attendants reason, 'and you are going to get hurt.'"

So maybe this isn't what I should be looking into as I'm getting ready to fly for 23 hours to make it to Kenya next week. Stopping first at JFK, then a long overshoot to Dubai, before finally making it down to Nairobi. And I'm not looking forward to it. I just hope that Emirates Airlines is equipped with one of these fancy new unregulated WiFi enabled jets (porn!)

I will cheers you to the fear of flying, at whichever point over the Atlantic Ocean these drinking age limits wear off.