by Stacy Baker

Created on: July 19, 2010

Phobias....yes that's what the doctor said I had about flying. My psychology teacher said its an unconditioned response when you see a plane and you visualize that plane crashing before you even get on board, palms start sweating, heart starts racing, teeth begin to grind, and unexpected sounds coming from irritated bowels. The day I flew to California I experienced some of those symptoms, but the day I flew back I developed all those symptoms. Here's how it began. We boarded the flight my family and me and plane took off and I was still holding on for dear life and I kept my eye on the sturdiest to make sure she was smiling (that always helped me relax) cause I knew if the sturdiest weren't smiling a) they were having a bad day or B) they knew we were in some kind of trouble. Now the way my mind works is I always think of the bad so I'm glad our sturdiest was smiling the entire time, cause I would've knew something was wrong. Anyway we are in mid flight everythingis going great, sturdiest is smiling and serving drinks and then over the loud speaker the captain says, we will be arriving in Houston Texas a little late and we will be flying through a thunderstorm. I would've went my entire life without hearing that statement and I didn't understand why the captain had to tell us about it. He then proceeded to tell the sturdiest to put up their drink carts and take the jumper seats (which I totally didn't understand) and all I heard was my mind say jumper seat. OK now I'm thinking we are flying in a thunderstorm, the one sturdiest that was smiling is now not smiling, and then the captain says we will be experiencing "choppy" weather and no one is to get up from their seats, and these sturdiest have seats that they can jump from the plane if we go down. My mind is really starting to race at this point and my heart was about to beat out of my chest at that point. Then I noticed the cabin door to the front of the plane opens and the captain comes out and goes into the restroom. I'm thinking who the heck is flying the plane? Since I'm not a frequent flier I had no idea about co pilots and auto pilot, but I knew that a thunderstorm....somebody needs to be behind the wheel. The captain seemed like he was taking a dump or something cause he stayed in that bathroom forever or at least it felted that way because time seemed to stand still. Anyways captain came out the bathroom, the plane began to bounce a bit, I looked outside and we were fling through some clouds and then we began to make our descent. I noticed after we flew through three or four little clouds we had perfect weather and we landed safely. Now either our captain had a strange sense of humor or the thunderstorm was the fastest storm in history or I was just a little over dramatic with flying and my phobia got the best of me.

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