Hard to believe that in under a week now I'll be heading to Madison for Bouchercon. Actually, it's very easy for me to believe, because it involves flying and because I've had the dream.
The thing is, I'm not a happy flyer. It's not like I jump through the roof, or claw at my seat mate, or demand to be let off and damn it I don't care if we're at 36,000 feet. No, I just twitch at every sound or quiver, and spend the duration of the flight counting backward from 16,000, which seems to be the average number of seconds between take-off and landing on most of my flights.
And I always know a flight is getting close, because about a week out, I starting having the dream.
It goes like this. I'm on an airplane traveling to Australia. (I'm not traveling from Australia, and this dream predates Lost by several decades.)
There is always something funny about the floor of the plane. Usually it's see-through, but last night it was a parquet basketball floor. Except when I could see through it. Also, the windows are always really big.
So the plane takes off, but it has a very hard time getting more than a few hundred feet off the ground. Usually we're flying through a city between buildings, but sometimes we'll dip beneath a highway overpass. There are always high-power electrical lines everywhere, and we have to weave in and out of them. The pilot assures us over the intercom that as soon as we get clear of the wires, we'll be able to gain some altitude.
We never do.
Everyone else on the plane is fine with all this. They mostly ignore what's going on, but there's always a man reassuring me that this is all perfectly normal. He makes this flight twice a week, and it's always like this.
Um. Sure.
Now, yes, I'm flying to Australia, and yes I'm flying from Oregon, but somehow we never manage to cross water. And yet, nonetheless, we crash in Fiji. It's always Fiji, and no one is ever hurt. Turns out there is a door at the back of the plane exactly like the emergency exit at the back of a school bus. (All the cool flyers probably sit back there, shooting spitballs at us dorky flyers toward the front.)
So we crash, and everyone climbs out through the emergency exit. As it happens we crashed at the airport. People are annoyed because they were supposed to have crashed in Australia. Well, not crashed. But no one but me is upset by the crash, just the location.
Then the guy who was reassuring me, who always has an accent but never the same one from dream to dream, starts pulling me through the Fiji airport. We have hurry or we'll miss our connecting flight to Australia. And I'm thinking, "Oh, crap, yeah. Gotta make that connection!" So I run along after.
Sometimes I give up. Fiji, I figure, is pretty nice. I make some friends and stay there on a tiny little island near the beach, which is near the airport we crashed at. The guy with the accent is usually around, urging me to fly on to Australia.
Last night, I flew on to Australia. On an airplane with a see-through parquet floor weaving in and out of power lines, tall buildings, and highway underpasses.
I'll have this dream once or twice more between now and Wednesday. Oy.
Normally when I fly I have my wife with me, who is a very sanguine flyer. Every time I twitch she rolls her eyes at me like I'm crazy. Which is actually rather calming.
For my flight Wednesday, I think I'll rely on beer.
12 comments:
I'm the crazy woman in the seat behind you, who starts jumping up and down as soon as things get a little bumpy, crying, "wheee! More turbulence, more turbulence!"
I should like to crash -er, land- in Fiji.
Have a nice trip. :)
p.s. Cross-version comments are reportedly fixed, yay!
Wow. That's a pretty well-developed anxiety dream. I can relate,though. I have similar "quiet" flying anxiety. Beer usually helps. And an iPod, and a book. Although the iPod might not be an option with the new security stuff.
The strange thing is that I never worried about flying when I was a kid - and I flew a lot. It wasn't until the Jamaica trip that I started getting sketchy about flying. Happy flying, and have a great time at B'Con.
Well, fortunately the iPod will be okay. I just found this page at the Transportation Safety Administration website. Laptop and iPod are safe. But not deodorant.
Curiously, while you can't take mouthwash, you can take "personal lubricants" up to 4 oz. Wouldn't want to impact the Mile High Club members, I guess.
You can take knitting needles, which just goes to show you whoever came up with this list never read a cozy.
I guess it shouldn't surprise me, but Meat Cleavers are on the No list, as are baseball bats and bows and arrows. So much for my longbow.
I hate flying too, Bill! Fear of flying, inverting numbers, I think we're kindred spirits!
Fiji? Cool.
I love flying. I was scared to death for my first flight, but handled it very well.
Now, let's not talk about sailing...
Bill and BekBek and Angie. I admire all of you, because you work through your fear and actually get ON the plane. I have never done that. I win the Big Baby award.
Bill, that's so detailed! I wonder what Freud would say about those descriptive bits: the accent, Australia, the fact that only you are distressed.
My recurring dreams are about not being ready for a math test and not being prepared for a play. And when I was 20 it was tornados. Always the tornado dreams, and sometimes elevators that had no gravity.
Sandra, good for you, adventurous soul.
Oops--Trace, you're brave, too. Forgot to add on your name.
I don't get any credit. I wasn't scared to begin with. I love the whole concept of flying.
I did have one moment on a flight in my teens, when we were just taking off and I had this thought about how if we were going to crash, this was the moment. And then *poof* the feeling went away.
I drive on the Interstate every day. Flying is infinitely safer -and I can have that beer.
Some day the grandmas of the world are going to show us that they and their knitting needles are not to be trusted.
It will be a sad day, but you gotta know it's coming.
I'm tempted to start knitting, just so I can take the needles on the plane with me.
dramamine. i have to take that for motion sickness, and by the time it kicks in my mouth is hanging open and i don't care about nuthin'.
i have a somewhat similar dream as far as the beginning. we taxi all over the damn town and get tangled in electrical lines, under highway bridges, squeeze around sharp corners with houses and grocery stores. this seems to go on for hours. when we finally do take off, we hardly get above the rooftops. it's a really annoying dream.
Crazy dream! It's weird, I've never had a fear of flying but maybe it's because I get motion sick so I take my meds and I'm pretty much Out for the flight!!
Good luck!! Maybe you need sleeping pills instead of alcohol?? :)
Post a Comment