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“I hate flying,” said the woman two seats back and across the aisle. She was in her late 30s or early 40s, sitting next to a college sophomore, en route to Colorado Springs. “Planes always make me nervous.”

I have to admit, sometimes that’s the case for me too. The first few times I flew, I loved it. Looking out the window and watching the ground drop away on takeoff. Watching clouds as we traversed America. But lately I’ve grown less and less fond of airline travel. The “fun” wears off and it gets replaced with the simple fact that you’re stuck in a small metal tube for 2, 3 hours. However long it takes to reach your destination.

I’ve never really been afraid to fly, though. That’s not to say that I don’t think about it. Who doesn’t think about plane crashes at some point? Especially when you start thinking about how high you are, how cold it is outside, how fast you’re going. You know, all the stuff you have no idea of while you’re actually on the plane.

When I flew from Orlando to Houston, the plane helpfully provided all of those stats on the screen in front of me! I don’t know why I needed to know that at 467 miles per hour and 36,000 feet, the outside air temperature was -67 Fahrenheit. That’s almost cold enough to inspire a Jack London story: To Build a Parachute.

I have gotten to the point that I don’t like airports. Especially George Bush International Airport in Houston. We landed at Terminal C right on time. I had 45 minutes to get to my next flight, which was located at gate To Be Determined on my boarding pass. So I went to the “Departures” board and checked. Gate B84.

Those who have been to Gate B84 in Houston are crying already. Tears of mockery or tears of empathy, they are tears nonetheless.

Gate B84 doesn’t actually exist. I mean that. You get to the B terminal, get to the 80s. You’ll see gates for 80, 81, 82, 83, and 85. Then there’s a little sign saying: Gate 84 -->

If you follow that, you end up in something that looks like a bus terminal’s stepbrother. There are six doors there, helpfully numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. And up on the monitor, I saw the Colorado Springs flight at gate 84K.

Yes, K.

Using my fingers and a toe, I discovered that K is the 11th letter in the alphabet. Did I mention there are six doors? Using logic, I decided this made no sense, so I waited for the gate attendant to get off the phone and asked where the flight for Colorado Springs was located. She informed me that when they called for boarding, I’d go through the door behind her and wander around the tarmac for a bit before climbing on the plane “over there.”

Soon enough, she called “Now boarding for flight [whatever] going to Colorado Springs” and I climbed into the plane they had. It was an economy jet. One row of seats on the left side, two rows on the right. I took my seat there in row A (the single row, which was nice for space) and moments later, the aforementioned lady who was afraid to fly was seated two seats back and across the aisle. Given the state of the economy jet, I could understand her trepidation. I took some comfort in knowing that in Tajikistan, they fly these same airplanes and there aren’t any news stories about how often they’ve crashed into mountainsides, and American maintenance has to be better than Tajikistani maintenance. Although that’s tempered a bit when you realize our media couldn’t find Tajikistan on a map of Tajikistan, let alone care about anything not located in Washington, D.C. or New York City, so maybe they crash every week. Maybe “Tajikistan” translates to “burning piles of plane debris.”

Of course, the flight was better than the terminal. And by “better” I mean “I’m telling the opposite of what is true.” About an hour into the flight, there was a bit of a lull in the conversations. Things were quiet. There was just the dull roar of the engines dully roaring. Then: BANG!

We sat there in silence for a few seconds. Then, a small frail voice from two seats back and one over: “Is anyone going to ask what that was?”

No one said anything for another five second or so. That’s when we hit turbulence.

Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing. Or rather, it turned out to be something that could be identified. The flight attendant was doing beverage service when it happened, and when he got to our area, the frightened woman asked what had happened. Apparently, a kid had brought a pool toy, similar to a beach ball. It was inflated. The attendant said, “Normally I tell people not to load those because of how much space they take up, but I figured in this case it would be fine. I forgot about the altitude.”

Funny, that. I forget many things when I’m on a plane.

Altitude isn’t one of those things.

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