Terror in the Skies

Yesterday I spent five hours trapped inside an airplane. In coach. In the teeniest coach seat I have ever had, by the way, so if you can avoid USAir, do. The entire experience, except for not dying, was bad.

At the gate while waiting to board I noticed two bearded and burly men who were obviously terrorists. We boarded anyway as Mitch said they looked more Greek than Arab. (Sue me for racial profiling.)

I was in the middle seat. On one side was my husband which was nice, but on the other was a man who coughed the whole way across the country and hogged the armrest. He wore earphones and an eye mask the whole time, and when I wanted to get out of my seat to walk around so I wouldn't get blood clots in my legs he refused to stand up and I had to crawl over him. It was quite intimate.

The stewardesses were both older and unattractive. I stared at a sign on the seat in front of me that described how to use the cushion as a flotation device, only we were going over mountains. Directly in front of me was a woman with a therapy dog. The dog, a boxer named Paloma I learned, was adorable, but I could not help wondering what was wrong with the woman that she needed a therapy dog with her all the time. Was she nuts? Would she crack on this flight? Oddly enough, there was another therapy dog on the flight, and that one was a German shepherd. Thankfully he was in First Class, very far away.

After a couple of hours we hit turbulence and it was bad enough for the pilot to tell us about it, as if we didn't notice. It would continue, he shared with us, so we'd better stay put and keep those seat belts tight. At this point I started to panic and my husband, in an effort to calm me down and playing with his cell phone, said, "Here, let's ask the Magic 8-Ball a question." I asked the app tearfully, "Will we land safely?" The Magic 8-Ball said, "YOU MAY NOT RELY ON IT."