You can't be distracted enough when a plane goes bump, says Gina Barreca.
I'll do almost anything on an aeroplane to distract myself from the fact that I'm actually on an aeroplane.
I walk down the gangplank (there must be another word for that entryway, but gangplank sounds just about right to me) carrying between 70 and 80 items to entertain me so thoroughly I won't even know I'm in what my friends now refer to as ''The Silver Bird That Goes In The Sky''.
Among these items are my iPod, my iPad, my CD player (because I haven't loaded everything on to those other devices), noise-cancelling earphones, a long historical novel (in case we get stranded in an airport), a cheap funny paperback (for when the long historical novel isn't required), and a small notebook into which I will scribble a version of what I write on every flight, ''Please let this be a good flight, please, please, please.''
To my husband's dismay, I also travel with a smallish (but not quite what you'd call ''small'') bag of special items given to me by friends who have provided adorably heart-warming tokens of their affection and reassurance.
These include but are not limited to my father's dog tags from World War 2, a bag of small coloured stones from a pal, a miniature Lego warrior princess, plastic wings usually given to children but presented to me by a purser on British Airways with what I sincerely hope was a non-ironic ''Well done!'' after we'd experienced a rather turbulent Atlantic crossing, an origami swan, my grandmother's rosary beads and a rabbit's foot that makes me feel guilty about the rabbit.
My husband is terrified that if a Transportation Security Administration agent opens my cache, they'll never let me back into the country.
They'd demand an FBI profiler: ''Lady, tell us again why you're travelling with a bag of rocks in your carry-on luggage.''
This is Michael's fear.
My fears are more immediate: I am afraid of turbulence. I'm not afraid of taking off or landing, which I know is foolish because if there's a time for one's hand to get slightly damp, those are the times. For me, the scariest parts of a flight are when things go bump.
Don't tell me it's just like a bump in the road. Most roads aren't built above the troposphere.
And if you tell me the plane bounces on air like a cork bobbing on liquid, then you better be popping that cork and offering me something liquid from a large bottle as you say it. Otherwise I remain unsoothed.
I read magazines on planes. I grab armfuls at the airport bookstalls because if the ride is indeed bumpy, I won't be able to read even the funny book. I will be able, like an infant, to look only at pictures.
But as altered as I have ever been by fear, chemistry and whatever was in that bottle they uncorked, I have never been so unnerved and so entirely divided from my essential sense that it seemed like a good idea to order, through the SkyMall magazine (in the seat pocket right next to instructions for a water landing and an air-sick bag), a 66kg, ''life-size'' Bigfoot Yeti sculpture.
Not even on the flight where I earned the plastic wings for good behaviour was I so desperate for diversion that the thought of spending $2250 (plus $225 for shipping and handling) on a ''nearly 6-foot-tall Garden Yeti'' made from ''quality designer resin and hand-painted for startling realism'' made sense.
Exactly how many of those miniature Smirnoffs does a passenger need to consume before deciding, credit card in hand, ''This is PERFECT! This I must purchase instantly, while being approximately eight miles above the planet, although naturally, I am disappointed that it cannot be shipped internationally.''
And what else needs to happen - I'm looking for exact recipes here - before a person can forget everything else in the universe so completely that she decides to order the Abominable Snowman Bigfoot ($2350 before shipping) as her garden sculpture's friend?
Whatever that elixir is, and whatever it costs, it's what I want to take on the plane with me next time I fly. I'm already buying extra legroom for the yeti.
- Hartford Courant
Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut and a feminist scholar.
