Saturday, January 1, 2011

Air Travel

Today I returned home from a lovely, albeit strange and full of random sicknesses, trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I visited my life-long best friend Jordan. I literally do not remember meeting here. Because I was four months old. Yeah.

So, to get home, I was required to take a plane. Well, technically I could have driven. Well, technically I couldn't. Wait... never mind. The point is, I took a plane home. And my opinions on air travel are mixed. I used to absolutely hate it for the following reasons:
(A) My ears pop at any altitude higher then about.... ten feet about sea level.
(B) I was five when 9/11 occurred. That kind of ruined my opinion about airline safety, even though every time you get in a car you are at least five times more likely to die then when you get in a plane.
(C) My young self was much too impatient to wait in lines at baggage and security, none the less sit on a plane for four hours.

They say fears from your youth scar you permanently. But I have to say I think I may have gotten over my hatred of flying. I still prefer being on the ground, though. So don't even go there. Mainly it's just because I am now mature enough to realize that the lines at security really aren't that long. Or at least not this time. But honestly, I wait two hours at Disneyland to get on Space Mountain for less than two minutes. I can wait fifteen minutes to get on a plane. And I'm also not as afraid of sitting next to strangers as I used to be. If you ask any of my friends they will probably say I'm sometimes too nice to strangers.

I just find that a lot of nice things happen in airports. Don't get me wrong, this is a major glass-half-full point of view. For example, on the way to Cincinnati, there were a lot of people from the army going home for Christmas. And that gave me a really nice feeling. It got me in the Christmas spirit. And also, most people hate babies on planes because they cry. But on the way home there was a really well behaved baby sitting diagonally to me, and she only cried two or three times, and even then her dad was really quick to calm her down. I was thoroughly entertained by that baby and her father interacting. I love how when adults are around babies they just act totally weird and crazy. It's really entertaining. More entertaining then The Social Network, which was the in-flight movie. Even though it was a good movie.

Which brings me to my main point: People watching makes travel. On the plane and in your destination, watching people from completely different walks of life from you in odd situations, like air travel, is endlessly entertaining. One day I just want to sit somewhere public and decently crowded and just write stories about the people walking by. I always think of stories, but I never write them down because I'm usually doing something. So I guess if my purpose in an outing isn't to write stories I won't do it.

Happy birthday to Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, J. Edgar Hoover, J.D. Salinger, and Max Azria.

Happy new year everyone! Try to make 2011 not suck.

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