Nightmare at 34,000 Feet

Portrait of a frightened man: Jason Avant, thirty-nine, husband, father, and writer on vacation. Mr. Avant is what they call a "nervous flyer", which is a polite way of saying "flyer who requires several glasses of something strong and several handfuls of something stronger to prevent himself from having a nervous breakdown every time the plane shakes or makes a course". Tonight, his flight home will be like something out of an old episode of a TV series known as...The Twilight Zone.

Let me just say this about flying with 17 month old toddlers...oh, that's right. Zoe is now a toddler. As in "one who toddles". As in "one who started walking on her own the day before our flight to Florida, and who discovered that she really enjoys walking on her own, and getting her to sit still on a 5+ hour plane flight after she's discovered that walking is fun HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA that's a good one, God or Whatever Name One Choses To Give To The Force That Runs The Way That The Universe Unfolds; you're an asshole, you know that?" Anyway, flying with 17 month old toddlers is something that should never be done ever. In fact, I'd recommend not flying with a kid under 5; it will be a cold day in Hell before we do it again. I discovered this as soon as we took our seats on that flight home from Florida; a flight that became a voyage of nightmarish discoveries.

Discovery #1: Flying Zoe Cannot Sit Still. Or Sit. Period. Flying Zoe prefers to stand, thank you. She prefers to stand in the aisle, or on our laps. Flying Zoe does not care about "beverage carts" or "turbulence" or "Daddy scarfing Xanax like ET scarfing Reese's Pieces because he's sure that the plane will hit an air pocket causing Flying Zoe to ricochet off the overhead compartment like a passenger on the Vomit Comet and yes I know that we haven't taken off yet, but I'm absolutely convinced that the plane could hit an air pocket while taxiing".

Discovery #2: Flying Zoe Learned A New And Awful Word, Apparently While We Were Boarding The Plane. That word? "Ow!" Now, babies learn new words all the time, but most of the time, they're like parrots when it comes to vocabulary: you can teach a parrot to say "quantum mechanics", but that parrot ain't gonna engage Brian Greene in a discussion on string theory. Somehow, Flying Zoe's favorite Flying Word became "Ow!", and she used every time we tried to get her to sit, or to go to sleep, or to eat a snack; she also used it just because she liked the way it sounded, and she wanted to share it with the rest of the passengers. After about an hour of "OW!!! OW!!!! OW!!!!!", I began praying for The Langoliers to show up.

Discovery #3: Flying Zoe Has No Time For A Nap. There's just too much going on in the plane! There's a brother whose hair needs pulling! There's a mommy whose gold hoop earrings must be tugged on! There are sippy cups and Binkies to throw! 

Discovery #4: Flying Zoe Waits For The Stewardess To Make The "Please Return To Your Seats And Fasten Your Seltbelts Because There's Turbulence" Announcement To Fill Her Diaper. I did become a member of A, if not The, Mile High Club, changing a diaper on the plane on the flight to Florida. Fatherhood - it's not just a job, it's an adventure!

Discovery #5: Flying Zoe Wants Nothing To Do With Daddy. This sucked. I hate to fly, but that doesn't mean that I will shirk my Flying Dad duties. If the grunts in 'Nam could go into battle whilst tripping on LSD, surely I can handle changing a diaper at 34,000 feet while hopped up on anti-anxiety medication. That wasn't the problem; the problem was that every time Beth tried to hand Zoe off to me, she began wailing "MOMMY!!! MOMMY!!! OW!!!!". I'm assuming that there wasn't an Air Marshal on board this flight; I'm pretty sure that I would've been pistol-whipped and handcuffed to the bulkhead. She absolutely refused to sit on my lap until about an hour before the plane landed. Which was great, except that as previously noted, this was a 5+ hour flight; I'm sure you can insert an appropriate time-distance analogy here. (Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe with an edited for content Jim Carrey-starring Yes Man as the in-voyage film would be mine.)

Discovery #6: When It Comes To Kids On A Plane, I Sympathize With Kidless Passengers - To A Point. There was additional drama that did not involve my child. There's no way of saying this without sounding mean and shallow, but I will say it as it does have a bearing on the story: a very bitchy and morbidly obese woman was seated behind us. The "morbidly obese" part - she weighed enough to push the back of her seat out so that the feet of the 3 year old kid seated behind her touched the seat. Now, if you've flown with a three year old, you know that their legs are just long enough to touch the seat in front of them, and that they kick. Well, of course this happened. And the woman kept turning around and snapping at the dad, who was doing his best to keep his kid's feet off of the back of that seat. Finally, the two got into a bit of a heated discussion - heated on her side, as he was a very relaxed Australian, and I say this "very relaxed" because she yelled that if the kid's feet touched her seat again she would pinch him. The Australian dad took that in stride. Well, as a twitchy American, I would say with confidence that if someone said they were gonna lay a hand on my kid, they'd get a fist in their fucking mouth. And in fact, I did say that. Loudly. Enough for her to hear. When the plane landed, the woman and her husband (and believe me after that nerve-fraying flight I was really ready to rip someone's head off, but I'm sure he felt the glares of everyone in our section who heard the whole thing) hustled off the plane as fast as they could. Cue Faux Rod Serling!

The flight of Mr. Jason Avant has ended, a flight not only from Point A to Point B, but also from the fear of flying itself. While this flight took him into the darkest reaches of the mind, Mr. Avant realizes that things about American Airlines Flight 277, from Miami to San Diego, could have been much, much worse. There could have been a spooky Cloud-Man on the wing, ripping apart the engine, which would have brought the plane down and ended the flight for good...wait, actually, that might have been an improvement. Never mind.