Fear of Flying and Why I Like It

Ann hates to fly.  I don’t mind it, except for the cramped seats where we travelers don’t just rub elbows, we exchange lint, and our auras become Venn diagrams. I really don’t mind it except for the ear popping on takeoffs and landings, and except for the instructions on how to use a seat belt, a seat cushion, and an oxygen mask. If anything really serious would happen, would any of those matter?  I don’t worry because flying is sort of like a Mexican standoff with fate. If the pilot really messes up and is going to kill us, then he’s going first.  Flying brings into focus for me the only use of math I can tolerate, the reassurance that thousands of flights take place every day and all the planes I see overhead are actually flying, and I’m safer in a plane than in a car, and I’m not afraid of driving, so why should I be afraid of flying? Besides both pilots up there are more experienced and better trained in their jobs than I am at driving a car. The math is on my side, for once.

When I get upset about flying, it’s usually about other things.  Two examples: A few years ago I flew with my brother to Corpus Christi (a rather ominous name if you’re afraid of flying) with a stopover in Denver. When the TSA agent checked my carry-on in St. Louis, she asked me to step aside for a moment, and I wondered if my brother had planted something in my luggage to get back at me for the time I broke his new arrows when I was ten, and he couldn’t shoot his bow.  The agent was staring at her X-ray screen, and said to me, “Please explain to me what that thing is. It looks mechanical or electronic.” I looked over her shoulder at the screen, and said, “That is a spinning reel – for fishing – I’m going to Corpus Christi to go fishing with my brother and my uncle.” She said, “It doesn’t look like a reel to me,” and in a moment five other agents crowded around her screen and they began to argue about its strange spidery shape, loose wire, and should they unpack my bag and see if the wires were connected, and I thought, “God, help me,” and then He did. An old guy who had worked for the TSA on the first Wright Brothers flight shuffled over and said, “That’s a spinning reel – for fishing – hm, it’s not the standard Garcia Mitchell 308; it’s probably a Shimano with a trigger bail and 200 yards of monofilament on it, so let him on the plane.” He was one smart guy, that old TSA agent.

Here’s one my daughter experienced.  On a flight from St. Louis back to Boulder where she is attending grad school, she was also pulled aside by a TSA agent, probably the same one who pulled me aside years ago. “What is that?” the agent said, pointing to a long, dark roll in my daughter’s carryon. “That?” my daughter said.  “It’s a summer sausage that my uncle gave me (the same one who flew with me to Corpus Christi, so there’s a pattern here), actually a homemade venison sausage.  He hunts deer.”  “With a gun?” the agent asked.  “Yes, and a bow and arrow.”  “It looks like plastic explosives,” the agent said.  They unpacked my daughter’s bag, cut off a slice of her summer sausage, and put some kind of chemical on it to see if it contained any flammables, TNT, glycerin, or propellant.”  The test was negative. It seems like the TSA agent thought my brother might be hunting deer with plastic explosives, or if he owned a gun AND a bow and arrow, he could be one of those survivalist, bomb-shelter nuts out to blow up people, including his own niece.

These are true stories. I’m glad the TSA is being suspicious for our own safety, but someone should train them in fishing reels and summer sausage.  I mean, everyone should know about fishing reels and summer sausage. The only question here is: “Why doesn’t my brother ever get stopped?”  The next time I fly with him, I’m going to sneak a little bottle into his luggage of the gel we used in grade school to get back at our friends by putting some of it in a kid’s jock.  It was supposed to cure athlete’s foot and it stung like hell and it was called “Atomic Bomb.”  I wonder what that TSA agent in St. Louis would think when she pulled a one-and-one-half ounce plastic bottle out of my brother’s luggage that was labeled “Atomic Bomb.”  Even the shuffling, old TSA guy couldn’t save my brother, I think.  Not that I would really do it. Thinking of doing it makes me laugh enough so that I don’t have to go through with it.

This brings to mind another story which I believe is true because a Catholic priest told it to us during a sermon about ten years ago.  I forget the sermon, but I remember this story.  (Let that be a lesson to priests everywhere.) The priest was in line at O’Hare Field along with a lot of other frustrated holiday travelers. Behind him came some overweight, blustery guy in a suit who was cursing at everyone and everything.  He ignored the line, wheeled his overstuffed baggage right up to the front of the line and said to the agent, “I’m in the Admiral’s Club; here’s my ticket.  I’m checking this bag, and I want a boarding pass – now!”

She said, “I’m sorry, sir, but even Admirals have to get in line and take a turn.  It’s only fair.”  The big jerk argued with her, then cussed at her, wrote down her name so he could complain, and stared down the rest of us as if to say, “Don’t you all know who I am?”  The ticket agent was polite, no matter what foul things he said to her, but she would not budge and eventually he got in line.

In a few minutes the priest got his boarding pass, but since he had plenty of time, he went back to the agent after the line went down and after the big jerk went to the Admiral’s Club to drink some more.  “I’m going to write to the airline about how well you handled that insulting passenger a few minutes ago. I was very impressed,” the priest told her.

“Thank you,” the agent said sweetly, “but that’s not necessary.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve been trained in ways to stay calm with such passengers,” she said, even more sweetly.

“What do you mean?”

“That man is going to New York – eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“Yes, eventually, and his baggage is going to Tokyo.”

Man, I love flying.

Special: You can now download my literary suspense novel Hibernal for your Kindle or the Kindle app on iPad or iPhone for $2.99 through Amazon.  Just log on to Amazon books and type in Hibernal or Kurt Haberl.  Also, the video trailer is still there.