This Is Your Pilot Speaking...

    Fear of Flying doesn't even begin to cover it. Nightmare on Elm Street Meets Every Plane Catastrophe Ever is more like it. So when Jeff and I decide to fly from New Jersey to Minnesota for our niece's wedding, obviously I was under the influence of a LOT of wine.

    I step into the plane, trying to look cool. I am not cool, I am catatonic. The Fight Attendant smiles at me, but I see nothing but the fear that is shining in her eyes: she knows this plane's going down. Okay, I also see that she is wearing WAY too much eye makeup for 2:00 in the afternoon, and her pants are at least twice as snug as mine. Good. Starting to feel better already.

    I avoid eye contact with every one who's boarding the plane, because I know the Crazy Plane Bomber is scoping out all of us, looking for the weakest person that he can use as a hostage.  I will NOT be the Weak Link. I button up my Lands' End jacket, turning it into a sort of Comfort Coat, like the ones they put on dogs during a thunderstorm. I'm so hot I could pass out.

    The plane takes off, and because my husband sprang for First Class seats (to keep me from peeing my pants in the middle seat, which I swore I would), the Flight Attendant (Ms. Uber Tight Pants) immediately asks me if I want a drink. "Shit, yeah!" I hear myself say, then add to soften that faux pas, "HA! Oh, no, no, not right yet..." Jeff orders a Bloody Mary, which I try not to read too much into. I relax. I take a sip of his drink, and look at Ms. Uber Tight Pants. She looks relaxed. (I like to gauge my panic on how panic-stricken the Flight Attendants look.)

     Right about then, Jeff asks me to hold onto his drink: he's going to the bathroom. I balance his glass on my "lap tray", feigning nonchalance: I fly all the time, and I am very, very cosmopolitan, despite the fact that I am wearing a Lands' End Jacket as a strait jacket/ Canine Comfort Coat. The captain's voice comes on the loud speaker. He's got a folksy, "I'm-from-Hotel-6, and-we'll-leave-the-lights-on-for-ya" kind of voice:

    "This is your pilot speaking, folks, and we're experiencing a bit of bumpy air, so we're climbing to 35 thousand gazillion feet in order to avoid the turbulence that will make you lunge for your Airsickness Bags. Keep your seat belts on so that we can identify the bodies when we plummet those 35 thousand gazillion feet to Earth. "

    I know he didn't say all of that, but he was thinking it. I looked at Ms. U. Tight Pants; she looks okay, but uncomfortable. Could be the pants. And as I stare at her, and listen to the Pilot, the glass-- filled with a very cold, icy Bloody Mary-- slowly slides down the lap tray, and without fanfare, slips off the tray, and lands in my lap. The Fight Attendant blinks at it.

    "Oooops," she smiles, "Do you think he might want another Bloody Mary?"

    Thoughts run through my head, most of them unprintable... basically what I want to spit out is this: "My crotch is full of ice, tomato juice, and lime: how 'bout a freakin' napkin, rhymes with Witch?"

    I (shakily, bravely, amazingly) just ask for some napkins, and she brings me a paper towel. One. I head to the bathroom, which is the size of my microwave. While I try to get more paper towels out of the dispenser on the wall, the entire dispenser falls off the wall and onto the floor. I'm now sweating profusely, I smell like tomato juice, and there are lime fragments all over my crotch. I will NOT pick up that paper towel dispenser from the disgusting floor: I will NOT be the Weak Link. Somehow, I leave the bathroom with my head high, and the paper towel dispenser still on the floor.

    Jeff looks at me as I sit down. He's drinking his (fresh) Bloody Mary. "Isn't this fun?" he smiles. "I told you, there's nothing to be afraid of...hey, Hon? Aren't you hot in that jacket?"
    





 

Chee Whiz

So this morning I went to Qi  (pronounced "chee") Gong (pronounced "gong") at my local library. I was late (natch), so I drove 70 miles an hour, trying to keep my head from exploding as I pulled into the parking lot on three wheels.

Why was I late? My biggest concern was my outfit: what does Grasshopper wear to Tai Chi/Qigong? I settled on black pull-on pants and what I like to think is my non-old-person t-shirt but translates into something from the 80's. I hoped I looked like Gloria Estefan in her Miami Sound Machine days. 

Not to worry:  as I walked into the building, I noticed the other gals ahead of me: lots of  pull-on pants, lots of sweatshirts with kittens frolicking on the fronts. I was definitely feeling cooler, but my jog/skip to catch up lessened that feeling exponentially.

The room was filled with gray haired women, all of them already sitting on their chairs. I, who had been jog/skipping to get there on time, was breathing so freaking stressfully, I couldn't be calmed down by a Jedi Master, much less Mr. Myagi. ("Use head for something other than target, Daniel.") And because the room was dimly lit (to protect the "chi", I guess, or just to keep the kittens quiet), I was squinting while still of course trying to smile: let's face it, I looked completely crazed.

"Pull yourself together, Grasshopper", I said, hopefully to myself. I took a chair from the back and sat down. The scraping and squeaking of the chair was horrifying.

"It is time to quiet ourselves and become The Turtle" intoned our group leader. "Quietly heal your mind for six minutes."

Now, I don't know if you've ever actually sat. still. for six minutes, but it is a long, long ass amount of time. I peeked at the gal next to me; she looked asleep. I tried to quiet my mind, but it kept talking. I peeked at the gal in front of me: seriously, where did she get a shirt that ugly? There was a man to the left; I believe he had actually passed out. I tried to think kind thoughts. I couldn't do it. I thought about writing this blog; that seemed so shallow, to use this lovely situation to write a snarky, sarcastic blog...

"Open your eyes, and breathe, breathe deeply. Now that we have healed our minds, we are ready to heal our bodies."

I knew I was doomed. We stood up, and proceeded to go through the 5 Qigong something or others that control/make up/bounce off our bodies. What the heck? I couldn't concentrate. I had no concept or left hand over the right, palm up, palm down, turn left, inhale, exhale. Basically I just tried to look very, very serene. I tried to look like a very, very serene turtle.

I tried to remember if I passed a Starbucks on the way here. I knew suddenly that I'd be playing some Miami Sound Machine on the way home, or maybe even going way back to ABBA...Chee whiz! I knew I was more of a Dancing Queen than a Grasshopper!  

"You can dance, you can jive, havin' the time of your liiiiiife...
 See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen..."

Warren Piece

By the time I was 8 years old, I knew I sucked at Math. It was a fact, a part of me, like being a short, middle child, with a phobic fear of crickets. I abhorred math; to this day, I still have trouble with the 9 times table. I have to start at 9 x 5, and work my way up or down. (God help me if I ever forget what 9 x 5 is...it's 46, right?)

Next to the phrase "nest of crickets", the words "Word Problems", to this day, make me want to run screaming from the room; once, in 4th grade, I did just that, and hid in the coat room for an hour. Being such a stellar student, no one actually missed me; I just got hungry for lunch and came out, nonchalantly wearing my coat.

Remember Nancy Kerrigan after she got whacked in the knee by Tanya Harding, wailing on the floor: "WHHYYY??? WHHHHYYY??". That heart-rendering drama show was actually first enacted by me, during the Math portion of The Iowa Test in 1958, when I read these words: 

If a train leaves Paddington Station at 2:25 on Wednesday, going 125 miles per hour through dense fog, what time would it arrive in Petticoat Junction, 58 miles away?

"WHHHYYYY? WHHHYYY?" Followed closely by "WHO CARES???"

Now, my father was a "Math Person", and although I know he thought the sun rose and set with me, I also know that he could never understand why his middle child was so damn stupid in math. I'd stare at a problem he was trying to explain, and see fairies dancing with dachshunds. He looked in my eyes, and could see the fairies dancing. I smiled. The dachshunds were so cute!

Here's the thing, though: I was an excellent reader. Loved to read: reading was my thing, fairly genius ability at reading, I think.  My father knew this, and was very proud (probably relieved that his only daughter, with absolutely no skills in long division, wouldn't be left homeless and destitute after all, as it appeared she did know how to read.)

But after the results of the Iowa Test came home, I needed to strengthen my status as Favorite Child, so I asked my father what book was the longest book he ever read; he told me, and I went directly to the library. I looked everywhere for this book, and finally went to the front desk, annoyed now because this search was severely cutting into my Nancy Drew and the Secret at Blackbird Pond reading time:

Me (petulantly, age 8): "I'm looking for a book, I think it's a biography, but I can't find it: can you please help me?" (Although petulant, I was also polite, this being the beginning of the "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers" phase of my life, as popularized by Scarlett O'Hara.)

Librarian (unimpressed, age 100): "What is the name of the book? Who is it about? " (Librarians obviously never used contractions when speaking, back in The Day.)

Me: "Warren Piece".

Librarian: "Never heard of it."

Now I knew this librarian chick had the Dewey Decimal System in her soul; she may even have had it tattooed somewhere on her body, she was Just. That. Good. So if she never heard of it, it just wasn't a freaking book. I told my father that later.

 "Dad!" (petulant doesn't even begin to cover it) "Warren Piece isn't the name of a real book, and WHHYYYY, WHHYYYY did you embarrass me like that?"

In response, I believe he sent me to my room to practice the 9 times table.