A collection of anecdotes all of which contain only 800 words.

Trapped in Space

I’ve already told you about my scariest flying experience on a turboprop at a small airport in Ohio, but if you haven’t read that and somehow ended up on this anecdote, read that first and come back to this story. We’ll wait.

In 2016 my spouse and I were invited to the wedding of dear friends who live in England. We had just been in England the year before for work, but we couldn’t pass up the chance to attend our friends’ wedding on the Dartmoor, which was being officiated by another close friend.

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AeroNOTics

Flying is not even close to the top of a list of Thing I Like To Do. Flying wasn’t something I or my family did when I was growing up. We drove everywhere. We drove to western Pennsylvania to see my mother’s family. We drove to The Shore — Wildwood, New Jersey to be more precise — to visit my father’s brother’s family. We even drove to Florida a few times to see my paternal grandparents. It was the 70s, and like many American families we drove. There is only one time that I can recall my father flying, and it wasn’t commercially. An old navy buddy of his flew his Cessna from New Jersey to a small airport near our house in Maryland, and took us both on a little excursion. As I remember this story, I honestly can’t recall any other times my father flew.

On the occasions I did get to fly I recall being excited. On rare occasions my mother and I would fly from Washington, DC to Pittsburgh, PA when my father couldn’t go with us; and one of her brothers would pick us up and drive us the rest of the way. There was at least one flight I took alone to visit my paternal grandparents in Florida. I recall enjoying the flights to and from Germany when I was 13 when a school friend named Dirk and I traveled alone to visit his oma in Cologne. I even flew first class one time when my cousin gave me a voucher and I was able to upgrade on a flight from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles.

It wasn’t often, but it also certainly wasn’t something to which I gave much thought. It was novel when I was a kid. Then it stopped being novel, and I can pinpoint when that changed. Not the year, just The Flight that scarred me.

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