Last year I connected with another blogger in a Facebook group who always made me laugh with her funny status updates and her responses to comments made in our mutual writer's group. We began chatting with each other through private messages, which is how I became better acquainted with today's guest blogger, Christine Collins Cacciatore.
One evening while we were discussing our worst fears, I mentioned that I am phobic about flying. Perhaps that's when Christine and I REALLY connected, because once I told her about my bad experiences while flying the not-so-friendly skies, she offered a far more harrowing tale of her own.
After reading Christine's story on her humor blog,
The Life and Times of Poopwa Foley, I begged her to let me share the post on my own blog. This is one of my favorite stories---- I feel her fear in the pit of my stomach every time I read it, yet I can't stop laughing by the way it is written. She turned a terrifying moment into one of humor, and that, folks, is a gift.
Please welcome Christine to Meno Mama's site today with lots of comment love (but no free airline tickets, mmkay?).
It’s
not that I’m scared to fly. I’m just worried the plane will
crash while I’m on it.
It
was just a thought I had when my husband, daughter, and I started our
Florida vacation by flying from Milwaukee to Pensacola with a 2.5
hour layover in Hot-anta. That was bad enough. The fact that we had
to drive from Rockford to the Milwaukee airport, park, shuttle to
airport, board, deplane, layover, board, deplane, then rent a car and
finish the drive to our destination was what made it a little more
challenging. By challenging I mean we were tired, cranky, and
hungry. We were barely recognizable by the time we got to Grayson
Beach, Florida.
After
just one spectacular, sunny day on the beach, however, we forgot all
about the previous day’s travel difficulties. I forgot how much I
hate to fly. After a week of the beach (our friend Captain Morgan
was there!) the trip down seemed like a bad dream. A blurry fog. A
mere memory!
Until
the night before we have to leave, when we realize it’s our last
sleep in this beautiful beach house and worse, that the very next day
we have to repeat last week’s travel nightmare in order to get
home. That’s ok, though, because the flights on the way down were
lovely, floaty things. I almost wasn’t scared.
The
next day, on the way back home, our second flight is the Atlanta to
Milwaukee part. Despite pleading with the gate agent she can’t
seat us all together, so my husband is back several rows. I usually
break
hold his hand while we fly. It’s 10:12 p.m. and I hope to sleep
during the flight, but whee! There’s a lightning storm our pilot
tries unsuccessfully to avoid and I feel like I’m in a bouncy
house. My stomach is in knots. I shoot six drinks in succession but
remain stone cold sober.
It
was then for some odd reason it feels as if the pilot has hit the
brakes. Hard. To say it is unsettling is an understatement, as I
would hope there wouldn’t be any red lights or stop signs this high
up. We lurch forward in our seats.
Daughter
latches on to my arm and says, “Why does it feel like the plane’s
slowing down?”
I
tell her, “Oh, that’s normal.” She’s unconvinced and gives
me the side eye. I curl my lips up in my best recollection of what a
reassuring smile looks like but I’m afraid it’s more of a
grimace.
After
our plane endures another severe shaking, she says, “Are you sure
that’s normal?”
I
am in a cold sweat but still have the presence of mind to lie to my
child. “Yes, of course.” It’s nowhere near normal, as far as
I’m concerned. And I’m not sure why we slow down in midair
either. I am convinced we’ve been hit by lightning and we’re
going down. All I can think about is our drink cart hasn’t even
come with the microscopic bags of pretzels and a meager cup of juice,
so I’m going to die on an empty stomach…something I vowed I’d
never do. I’m freaking out a little bit. Like, “there’s
someone on the wing” freaking out.
However,
I school my features into confident, soothing mom mode and tell her
as long as the flight attendants aren’t worried, we don’t have to
be worried either.
It
was at that point the pilot makes an announcement over the crackling
loudspeaker. “This is your captain speaking. The plane is going
down. Please find your seats and buckle up because stuff just got
real.”
My
husband tells me later that what he actually said was, “Flight
personnel, please find your seats because we’re about to encounter
some turbulence.” However, between you and me, he never hears
things right.
My
daughter and I both watch, horrified, as the flight attendant hurtles
past us, drink cart rattling, rushing to secure the cart and fasten
her seat belt. This isn’t just turbulence. Our plane ride has
turned into a hayrack ride on a country road of potholes.
I
don’t even want to look at my daughter. I’ve let her down. I
finally sneak a peek at her and—you know how horses look when they
get scared? You only see the whites of their gigantic eyes, their
sides are heaving, their nostrils flaring? Then you have a pretty
clear picture of what my daughter’s face looked like at that
moment. The Xanax she has washed down with rum does not seem to be
helping.
But
what an exciting ten minutes followed! I believe that if the
Guinness Book of World Records had a category for speed-reciting the
Lord’s Prayer, I’d be the record holder. Through the buzzing in
my ears I heard someone swearing like a sailor then realize it’s
me. My daughter’s fingernails leave gouges in my arm.
Finally,
the plane stops rattling. She releases her death grip and pretends
to read a book. I am faking sleep and watch her turn pages with
shaky hands.
My
nerve endings are completely shot.
At
last we land safely. I have obviously kept the plane up in the air
single handedly with my prayers, although the ungrateful rabble we
flew with doesn’t realize it. They are rushing the door to leave
like there’s a Black Friday sale on TVs at Walmart and not waiting
their turn so that I, their champion plane-keeper-upper, might depart
the plane. I am petulant and crabby, naturally. If Bruce Willis had
saved their plane, they’d be letting him
off first.
Finally,
after what feels like forever, my exhausted family is able to get off
the plane, collect our luggage and we’re on our way back home.
None of us are looking forward to the two hour drive home but we are
on the ground and quite frankly, right now there’s nowhere I’d
rather be.
***WANT MORE MENO MAMA? This week I was featured on Midlife Boulevard with my post, "The Suburbia of My Childhood." You can read it here: http://midlifeboulevard.com/suburbia-childhood-baby-boomer/
Christine Cacciatore is a
multi-published author, having four humor stories in four different
Not Your Mother’s Book anthologies. She enjoys co-writing
romance novels with her sister, Jennifer Starkman; together they have
published Baylyn, Bewitched and Cat, Charmed, with the
third book Elise, Evermore coming out this winter.
Chris is a
three-year board member of the In Print Professional Writer’s Group
in Rockford, IL and a proud three year member of the Prompt Club, to
which she’s always late. Chris is married to a devastatingly
handsome man she met on eHarmony and has three children, a gigantic
black dog, and the cutest granddaughter in the world.
