By Maria Prato-Gaines, Staff Writer
So there I am last month sitting next to my daughter, my palms glazed with sweat and my chest feeling like a small elephant planted itself on my lungs.
Most people will tell you that they don’t like flying but for me, that’s the understatement of the year, I absolutely and undeniably dread it.
I can’t honestly imagine a worse way to go.
And, as if to comfort me, people are always saying the same thing: “Well if it makes you feel any better you’re more likely to die in a car accident on your way to the airport than in an actual plane crash.”
Well for the girl who commutes an hour and a half a day to and from work, let me throw those good Samaritans a clue, you’re not helping. What I try to explain to people time-and-again is that dying in a car accident is quite a different animal than dying in a plane crash.
Usually in a car accident you have mere seconds to reflect on your life, but bring that same fate into the skies and it’s minutes — minutes to think about the slideshow St. Peter is about to show you as you plummet toward the earth.
The one comfort I do have, besides the overpriced bloody Marys, is that I can take precautions.
For instance, even in the most ungodly heat I show up at the airport garbed in long sleeves, pants and closed toe shoes. I like my limbs enough to overlook the heat rash I might get as this uncomfortable ensemble is a major safeguard in case of a collision.
Decked out like an Inuit I laughed to myself as I head past those first-class passengers. In my head I’m saying, “Yeah buddy, enjoy those warm toilettes because if this bird goes down, you guys are the first ones to go.”
Here’s a fun fact you should know before booking a flight: If you can get past the lavatory flushes interrupting your movie every few minutes, you’d be sitting amongst us rear passengers, the lucky few who just happen to have a 40 percent more chance of surviving a crash.
As I settled down among this batch of survivors, I position my bags under the seat in front of me to quickly pull out to act as a shield in case of an altitude dip. One of the most common injuries during a crash are broken legs.
Quite the disadvantage when you’re trying to quickly exit a plane while it’s engulfed in flames, I tried to explain the young auditor sitting next to me.
He chuckled not realizing that this was just an intro to my hysteria. Admittedly sometimes I can overreact in high-pressure situations but as the plane’s engines began to hum the adrenaline started to pump, dizziness ensued and my breaths grew shallower and shallower. My grip-of-death seat belt, which I typically fasten until I get that numbing sensation in my pelvis, probably didn’t help much either.
Now the young man who had the unfortunate luck of sitting next to me wasn’t so shocked when I began to bow my head. He soon realized I wasn’t praying as I put one hand on the head rest in front of me while placing my other hand on my forearm and positioning my legs so that my feet were slightly behind my knees.
”What to do in case of a plane crash,” I said to him feeling I should at least acknowledge his curious stares.
Following another giggle and a head shake, seconds later his face changed from curiosity to horror as I began drilling my 6-year-old Bella.
”OK, so what do you do if the plane starts to fall?” I asked. Me I couldn’t have been prouder as she put her overpriced airport pillow around her neck and huddled up in a ball. He didn’t seem as impressed.
So there the three of us sat and as the plane sped up slowly lifting off the ground, I kept my eyes closed, mumbling a prayer and holding Bella’s hand so tight the poor thing probably felt like she had a tourniquet on. Despite my infamous “Maria Meltdowns” needless to say we survived our flight back from California.
But in doing, as a self-proclaimed control freak, I had to come to terms with something that’s not necessarily an easy fact of life. Preparation can be one of our greatest coping tools in hard times but it’s not until we accept that we have such little control over our lives that we, or rather, I, can just live and let be. I’ll try to keep that in mind during my next go-round in the friendly skies.
Maria Prato-Gaines is a staff writer for The Cranbury Press. She can be reached at [email protected].
