Flight Check

Airports make you go higher: expenses, anxiety, patience, air.

It really is a wonder that one can wake up in one place and go to bed in another hundreds or thousands of miles away, though the process itself has a way of stripping away the allure. Like a summer squash washed, peeled, and blended, air travel renders its main ingredients (exploration, curiosity, opportunity) unrecognizable.

I should specify that I refer here to commercial flights, and if you ever thought otherwise, I pray that I may one day live your life.

There are positives to flying, mainly that it is not busing, which, unless you’re boarding the Jitney from the Upper East Side to the Hamptons, is the singular worst experience ever created by the hands of man short of war crimes and unexpected phone calls.

The truth is, I am grateful every time I get to be on a plane somewhere. I marvel at the privilege of seeing the world from above, the buildings like anthills, the clouds like fluffed pillows, the streets and highways like veins connecting the landscape below.

Then the sleeping man next to me farts, and the flight attendant and I lock eyes.

“Coke, please.”