The Next Big Adventure

Thursday, I leave for a week at James Madison University to study the Constitution.

I am officially the empress of the geeks.

I applied for, and won, a scholarship to spend an entire week studying the Constititution and learning how to teach it to elementary students.

I can't wait.

You see, I am a history major.

I am a Virginian.

I am going to be all alone.


This is going to be just like college. :)

Now the downside: I am Sissy McNutcase when it comes to flying. I don't know if it's because I am claustrophobic (yes), or I am a control freak (absolutely) or every time I go to get on a plane, some other nut job tries to blow up an airport or whatever. So, I have to take off my shoes, unpack my laptop, and be prepared to prove that my Bobbie Brown foundation isn't going to explode upon take off.

I wasn't always like this. I used to get on a plane and sleep before takeoff. I could hop a Delta jet to New York for the weekend like other people hop onto their bicycles.

Then, once, I hopped a jet with Lawyerboy and we hit the motherlode of turbulence. "All is well," Lawyerboy, who also holds his pilot's license, "if something bad were to happen, the pilot would hit the seatbelt light." And so help me, that is exactly what happened.

And something in me snapped.

It also didn't help that we were coming in over Key Bridge, which had just been the scene of the crash of that Air Florida jet. During college, I usually worked in Washington, crossing one of those bridges daily. With those big jets going over- you haven't taken off in a jet until yours goes out on the runway at Reagan National and then basically backs up to be sure it has enough room for takeoff. Seriously. It reminds me of a slingshot. Or taking off on an aircraft carrier.

So, I have become a bad flyer. It has something to do with not being in control and also being terrified of dying in a fiery plane crash. That's all. I also believe that flying is akin to magic. I don't understand how it works - I mean, after all, the wings have to be able to move up and down. THAT freaks me out. Don't ask me why. Maybe it looks like they are trying to fall off.

I am always afraid that I am going to freak out like William Shatner did in that episode of The Twilight Zone.

So, there you have it.