Death Rehearsal

I pity us all when we fly, jammed into our cramped seats, our meager belongings stuffed in around us like the trinkets of the ancient dead as they were sent off to the Underworld.We too are equipped for that long journey, but to where?  A place where we might just need all those I-Pods and laptops?No wonder we’re nervous at takeoff, when every earthbound cell in our bodies is screaming, “You’re wingless, idiot! YOU CAN’T FLY!"Then the plane starts racing faster and faster down the runway and the little TV in the seatback in front of you starts showing some sad girl in too much makeup pole-dancing with the mic-stand while rivulets of blood course down her cheeks. You look at her and think, "This is my last view of life on Earth?"  Then you feel the aircraft crookedly rising, then the whine, then that horrifying THUNK! when the wheels get sucked back into its belly and you're doomed with no way out.I flew 1500 miles yesterday and that dandy live TV that Jet Blue offers kept me current about every catastrophe down below: Cyclones all over the south. A 737 forced to make an emergency landing in Yuma on account of unexplained smoke. And, across the Pacific, radiation at – did they actually say a million times the safe level? - still spilling into the ocean.I snapped it off finally and instead read an actual book and wondered with some irritation how it could be that, with the soft green contours of the whole eastern seaboard beneath us, literally all the people seated by windows had pulled down their shades.Maybe they were as skittish as I was. You never know when you’re flying what others are feeling – unless of course, as happened yesterday, you finally bump down on the tarmac and the whole passenger-list breaks into wild applause. Then the relief . Ah the relief that you're still here to talk and grouse and make friends with the person beside you.

a bumpy flight sure gets your attention