Off to Texas!

Some people love to fly on airplanes.

I am not one of those people.

Today I’m flying to Texas because my Nana Jo turns 90 tomorrow.

Flying just makes me…well, I sort of feel like I’m walking to my death the second I step onto the aircraft. When the flight attendant is like, “Hello and welcome,” I want to reply, “Please don’t kill me.”

Traveling with children doesn’t make it any easier. Usually I have Tom to help me out. Not this time. And okay, I’ve traveled with the kids alone before, but still.

Tom would also be there to calm me down.

“Will you play Lost with me?” I would ask. Lost is a game I play and it’s based on the show Lost. (Duh) It doesn’t make any sense but to calm myself down, I pick passenger and say which character on Lost they would be in case we crashed on an island.

“No,” Tom would usually say.

I’d ignore him and whisper, “You can be Jack. Only you aren’t a doctor but still, I’m sure you’ve been trained to take a bullet out of someone, right?”

Tom would blink at me. “What are you TALKING about?” He never watched Lost with me because he’s strange. He claims the show is weird.

“Shhh, Jack, I’m thinking. I couldn’t be Kate, because I suck at tracking people. I’d get lost in a second and would curl up in a fetal position and cry. I could be Clare, only I wouldn’t go crazy. Then again, if I went without my Diet Coke for days on end, I might. Ha ha.”

“I really don’t get how—” Tom would start again.

“Tommy could be Aaron. That man over there could be Sawyer. He’s pretty cute,” I’d continue.

“Uh, excuse me, I’m sitting right here,” Tom fumed.

“And there’s our Hurley! He’s even eating a candy bar. Perfect!”

By this point, Tom would be flipping through a SkyMall magazine totally ignoring me. But still. It helped take my mind off the fact that I was in a death can with wings.

Who will play Lost with me today? I have a feeling if I leaned over and asked a perfect stranger to play Lost with me, he’d ask if he could change his seat. If I asked my son to play with me he’d say, “You wouldn’t let me watch Lost. You said the smoke monster might scare me. Or people called The Others. So I can’t play.”

Who will calm me down? If I didn’t feel like playing Lost on the plane, I’d scribble Tom a note with I’M SCARED written across it and he’d take my hand without a word.

I should be fine though. I’ll just think of happy things.

Like the fact that my husband will be home in a week.