Do you hate to fly? Do you feel ridiculous flying around in the air? I do. Why do we fly around in the sky? The margin for error is pretty slim up there. Running out of gas is just not an option. Nor is a flat tire.

In a car, you can afford to have those problems. Just put some gas in that sucker and it will start up. But there are no gas stations in the sky. Or spare tires. Jacks. Wouldn’t help.

We don’t really listen to the instructions about the oxygen masks and exits, do we? Oxygen mask? What the hell is an oxygen mask going to do? An exit door? Pry it open and jump out? Flying out an exit door without a parachute is bad. To complicated. I wasn’t listening anyway.

What are we doing there in the first place?! What would we think of a bird if it started walking down a crowded street instead of flying around where it belongs? Pigeons do it, and some little wrens beg at sidewalk cafes. But we encouraged that with our crumbs and popcorn. Besides, they have feet and wings. We just have feet.

Anyway, if a BUNCH of birds were walking en masse in our city streets, we would ask those birds what they were doing. Send them back in the air.

Birds are smart. They know they don’t need gas to fly around. They know how to fly and they know how to walk. If a bird didn’t have wings, he probably wouldn’t fly. We do NOT have wings.

A bird knows he can get on a high-riser or a tree and jump off. He doesn’t need a parachute or an oxygen tank or tires and stuff. He just jumps off and flies. It is natural. And. If something goes wrong, he can dive right down and land in a tree or something. He’s little enough to do that. A plane can’t really land in a tree. Too big. No room.

If a bird had to have an oxygen tank and a parachute to fly, he would stay on the ground. Birds don’t need air traffic controllers, either. They don’t bump into each other when they are flying around. They can see another bird coming. With their eyes.

We do try to pretend to be birds, though. We have pretend wings. No feet, but wings and such. We look like birds in a plane. In the air flying around. Why? Who thought of this? I know, I know, the Wright Brothers decided they wanted to flit around in space. Who asked them?

But as for me? Being on the ground has it’s advantages. You can’t fall far.

When flying is an absolutely necessity. . .an emergency or something. . . I sit in my seat stiff as a crowbar pretending to be a normal person; glancing about casually, looking for terrorists, a hole in the door, ice on the wing, any infraction that might result in my plunging to earth from 30,000 feet, clutching my rosary. (I don’t even have a rosary.) But if I had one, I would clutch it.

When we get off the ground, panic sets in. I see clouds, hell, I am IN the clouds. Oh well, who listens to me? Sniveling cowards who fear flying belong in the 18th century.