Donn Speaks Plane-ly (Or: Panic At 39,000 Feet)

"There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes." -Erica Jong, "Fear of Flying"

I was just as surprised as you.

As I readjust to the everyday, I am compiling lists of blogging topics inspired by my trip to Bali and Hong Kong. Posts of the adventure will assuredly follow, but for the time being I'm just putting my thoughts in order. The foremost right now is that I was so worried about John wigging out on airport juntas that I really failed to inspect my own fear of flying. Damn, sometimes I really *bleeping* hate irony.

I needn't have worried about John at all. He was wonderfully calm and cooperative with all security personnel and checkpoints, plane trips and airline crews, and fellow travelers. He didn't even need to take all of the prescribed sedatives. I am insanely proud of him. And I'm not trying to sound like Mother Teresa here, but I am really, truly grateful that I was the one who ended up having the panic attacks and not him. I want no one, especially my Johnny, to experience the absolute terror of an anxiety blitzkrieg.

While John's panic comes from a different (and more sensible) place, mine is rooted in a good old fashioned fear of flying. This is something I genuinely believed I was over and done with. When I was younger, I was petrified to get on a plane, but a 20-hour journey to Australia when I was 18 changed that. Over the years, I've flown, on average, twice a year, and with the rare exception of one horrendous flight (thank Christ I was still drinking then), all of my air travel has been unremarkable and without incident.

That Australia trip was my first real plane ride, not counting the Pan-Am trek to Orlando when I wasn't even a year old. (Incidentally, my parents tell me I screamed bloody murder all the way to Florida. So, you see, I've never been good on planes.) Before we left for Sydney, I worked for months with my therapist on my fear, and at one point, she asked me to imagine my fear as an object. The first thing that popped into my head was "potato". This is interesting because, as I'm sure you well know, the potato is a root vegetable: rooted firmly, unshakably, in the ground. My mascot for that maiden voyage became a Mister Potato Head, to remind me that no matter how high in the air I soared, I was always planted squarely on the ground. Nothing could change that. Not even a Boeing 747 with bad chunky coffee and a hunky Aussie flight attendant named Dirk.

So how is it that, after 13 years of relatively panic-free air travel, my old fear reemerged on the return flight from Asia? The plane rides on the way there were fine, or, more accurately, I was fine on them. This could be because John's whole family was with me on those departing flights; on the way home, it was just John and myself (we all left on different days). I was seated between John and his sister Lisa, who, though just a few years older than me, has always had a very motherly energy toward me. It could also be because those flights were, for the most part, very smooth and tremor-free. On the flight back to the States, it was a different story. There was turbulence. A lot of it.

And ah, there's the rub. My fear is not about control issues (I'm perfectly happy letting the professionals fly the plane). Or claustrophobia (though I can sometimes be slightly claustrophobic, it doesn't happen on airplanes). Or hijacking (that thought honestly never occurs to me). Or moral quandary (I once had a friend I was half in-love with, who thought she was Greta Garbo, and felt morally conflicted about flying because it just didn't seem right that there was this big mechanical bird soaring through the sky, taking us to strange new lands).

It's about the turbulence. I hate it. I *bleeping* hate it (let's see how many times I can say "bleeping" in this post).

Now I know that turbulence is nothing to be afraid of, that it's perfectly normal and planes don't crash because of it, that those big hulking intricate vessels cannot possibly be undone by a little uneven air. But fear is not rational. Fear does not listen to the experts. Fear does not buy the unwavering, ever-smiling, perpetually-bubbly faces of the flight attendants (which, I suspect, is a class in Stewardess School: "How to Keep Your Face Unfazed & Beaming Beatifically While the Plane Shakes Faster Than A Loco Vibrator").

My unreasonable fright introduced a whole series of terrifying symptoms as soon as that plane started to rattle and the seat belt like ding-donged on. First, I couldn't breathe, and the exertion and focus it took to simply draw breath was nearly impossible. Then my heart started beating faster than Charo's chi-chis. Next my stomach tightened sickeningly, and I felt as if I would lose my surprisingly-delicious vegan meal all over the sleeping Asian in front of me. I mean, how could that freak sleep?!?!? Didn't she know we were about to go down??? Didn't she realize that at any moment one of the wings was going to snap off and we were going to plummet into the ocean??? I may seem angry at the soundly-dozing chick, but in reality I was just wildly jealous of her calm. Erica Jong was right, as she so often is: there really are no atheists on turbulent plane rides. As soon as that jet commenced its awful hurdling, I was praying to Jesus, Buddha, Allah, The Goddess, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, anyone. You name it, I invoked it.

It also doesn't help that I've seen one-too-many disaster flicks. "Fearless" is one of my favorite films, and the plane crash scene is both beautiful and barf-inducingly realistic. All those 80s TV movies about air disasters are also firmly submerged in my mind. I remember one starring Ana "Falcon Crest" Alicia, where the roof of a Hawaii-bound jet is ripped off during flight over the Pacific. It was a true story.

Which leads me to believe that the airline industry, which always seems to be in need of money, should have little pharmacies on every plane. Each one should be staffed by a doctor/pharmacist, who can freely supply meds at passenger request. Don't laugh, this is a very good idea. Everybody wins. The airlines make a cut of the sale. The drug companies, ever eager to continue their quest of world domination, could now claim ownership of the clouds. And the fearful passengers like me could be drooling contentedly in La La Land while the plane lurches, shakes, and shimmies toward its destination.

So it came to pass that my husband, who I feared would panic-attack himself all the way across the Pacific, ended up comforting me. He offered me his sedatives (I took one, but it didn't help). He soothed me with comforting words. He sang me funny songs he learned 25 years ago at camp ("'Someone's been eatin' my porridge!' said the Papa Bear..."). He held my hand. That helped most of all.

Right now I'm at a place where I don't want to fly at all. This is challenging because I travel for my job, and I love to travel for leisure. But I'm just scared that the next time I'm in my fully-upright seat (I think reclining an airplane seat is the height of rudeness, since it pretty much prostrates you into the lap of the person sitting behind you), and that big mechanical bird starts fluttering its wings, I'm going to end up in a straight-jacket before we touch ground.

And that's the *bleeping* truth.