"Now that's an understatement."

And now: a rant.

 

Lately I have been flying a lot. When I was younger I used to LOVE to fly...mom would get us some bubblegum (the good kind - Bubblicious) to chew whenever we took off and were up in the air so that our ears wouldn't clog...I loved every part of it....I loved putting my backpack through the "xray machine"..which you probably could have put a bike through back then and nothing would beep. I loved walking to the terminal with my family...getting on the plane. I loved turbulence and I REALLY loved (and still do) a bumpy landing.

 

This all changed for me sometime in my middle school years. I think the TWA flight 800 scared me a bit.  Not to mention once on a flight BACK in the day I was sitting next to a woman IN THE AIR reading the bios of every person that died in the crash. YOU CAN'T READ THAT STUFF ON A PLANE!!! And then maybe it got a little worse after 9/11. I remember one flight I was on a few months after 9/11 and there was some 40 year old muscle man in army pants doing lunges and punches into the air in the back of the plane...a girl about my age in the row over was staring at him and he would just tilt his neck and stare back at her...all creepy-scary like...and I thought to myself, "Oh yeah...this guy is charging the cockpit and we are done." The plane landed. No issue.

 

Flash forward to two years ago. I was on a smaller plane from Wisconsin to Texas and there was a bad storm over the St. Louis area and things out the window were getting bleak. I was watching our flight attendant like a hawk...he kept getting on the phone to talk to the pilots and when he put a seat belt on I knew we were in for it. Lets just say I SAW OUR PLANE GET HIT BY LIGHTNING!!!...then our plane started making a weird revving noise and going up and down (to the point you couldn't really feel how much or little the plane was going up and down). People were screaming, etc. It was traumatic...but clearly I lived.  Now to those of you out there thinking, "Well I read an article about how planes are engineered to have lightning hit them and they get hit all the time." Ok - do me a favor - get in a plane, get to 30,000 feet and see a horizontal streak of lightning touching the wing of your plane going back to where the engine is. And read the article again.

 

So anyways...I flew around the 4th of July this year and my plane that was supposed to take off at 9:00AM from Dallas didn't end up taking off until 2:45PM because they had to fly in a new plane as the one we were supposed to be on had unfixable mechanical issues....yessssss that is right...long. fun. layover. So when I finally got to my grandparents that night I was telling everyone the story of how I had a 7+ hour layover and how I wasn't the calmest flyer in the world to begin with. And my Grandpa goes, "Now that's an understatement." Niiiiiice.  So anyways, as I have been flying this summer I have had some ideas.

 

Ok - so you know that point in flying when you are throwing everything you own in bins and shoving them down long metal tables...taking off your shoes, undoing your belt, removing all the jewelry you didn't know you had on, trying to take any liquids out of your luggage (pending on which airport you're at), all the while making sure that your boarding pass stays somewhere you remember through the entire process of people yelling at you??? It looks something like this:

Yes yes. That is the moment I'm talking about. I think there should be photographers in that moment....kind of like when you walk into a theme park and someone comes up and says, "Can we take a picture of you and your group?" Ok - well this person would take a picture of you as you look RIDICULOUS and then maybe again on the flip side when you're walking to the nearest bench with your shoes in your hand..trailing your belt and purse/suitcase awkwardly and looking dejected and then they could send this picture to your loved ones and EVERYONE could get a good laugh. I think it would bank. I mean $$$$$$ BANK.

 

One final thought from my flight yesterday: Why would you bring tuna on a plane? Now I know I'm not reinventing the wheel with this happening to me because once on an episode of The Office, Oscar brought a tuna sandwich on the plane. But someone did it to me yesterday. And it took all I had not to stand up and turn around in my seat and yell, "OK SERIOUSLY --  WHO BROUGHT THE TUNA??? AND WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!?" 

I have a few more stories...but I don't want to speak of them here. Ask me in person. I'll tell you. Say these three words: Emergency. Exit. Row.