There is something about flying on an airplane that makes me feel like a little kid, which doesn't make a lot of sense, since I never flew when I was one. In fact, the first plane ride I remember didn't happen until I was 15, when I got to pilot a Cessna as part of the Ace Academy program, a summer camp for aspiring pilots. A bit strange that I aspired to be a pilot, yet never rode on a plane, and my first ride involved me being in the pilot's seat.
The dream of being a pilot, like so many of our childhood dreams, never materialized, and the amount of plane trips I have taken is far too few for my taste, being only around half a dozen in my entire life.
So maybe this explains why air travel is so exciting for me, that the process of sitting in a metal tube hurtling through the air at hundreds of miles per hour has not become mundane yet. I prefer to think that is not the case, but rather that I prefer to see the excitement and adventure in mundane things. That not only can I look at a propeller of an aircraft and revel at the engineering required to make that function so well that air travel can even be considered boring, but also sit in an Olive Garden with my family and revel at the miracle of baked bread, slowly tearing apart a breadstick, watching the tiny air pockets separate into torn pieces, amazed that we as humans can invent leavened bread, much less airplanes.
It is amazing to me how quickly we as humans become acclimated to new things. As I fumbled around the airport check-in, trying to cram my backpack into an impossibly tiny space, I feel the eyes of others upon me, and imagine them annoyed as I really have no clue what I am doing, while the process looks completely routine to everyone else. Everyone looks bored and hassled, except for the flight attendants, whose job is to not look bored. I wonder how it it's possible to even be bored on an airplane, whether you have flown six times or six hundred times, toward vacation, toward work, or toward home. I will try to not pass too harsh of judgement, it is only 6AM, after all.
It's easy to be embarrassed by my lack of common sense in these routine matters, but it is also easy to be embarrassed about being so excited about something everyone else considers to be a nuisance. But then, I remember that my life is as much of an adventure as I want it to be. It's better than any Chose Your Own Adventure book, because this adventure is real. And so I sit in an airplane, in wonder of the complexity of the airplane, in enjoyment if the g-forces pushing me into my seat, in amazement at how quickly the city becomes a smattering of tiny lights, and in hope for new choices to choose from in the adventure book that is my life. I will happily fumble around trying to figure out how to ride a bus, how to stay at a hostel, how to make friends of strangers, and I will enjoy it because, god dammit, I choose to make this life an adventure.
So flying makes me feel like a little kid, not because I enjoyed flying as a little kid, but because I am still a little kid. A little kid that wants to know how things work, even if they are mundane and boring. A little kid who wants to learn and understand everything. A little kid who wants to go on an adventure. Who wants to come along?
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