I love to fly

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I mean in a plane, and I'm not flying it, I'm just the attentive passenger. I think I can safely say that I took my first flight before I was two. I've had some long flights and some pretty short ones. I have never flown on a jumbo jet or the Concorde, but I have flown on some pretty big jets and I once got to fly in a tiny 4 seater. I loved that last one. But the worst flight in my life wasn't because of a bad pilot. It wasn't bad weather. It wasn't delayed, but that might've actually helped a tiny bit. No, on November 23rd, 1984 I was in Houston at a friend's, two of them actually. The friend was on the phone talking to her mother when the operator cut in and informed them there was an emergency call that needed to come through. It was my sister, she told me that Dad wasn't doing well and I needed to get home ASAP. I started crying, I told my then roommate to get her stuff, we had to leave. I tried to drag my electric blanket out of the house without unplugging it. The other friend told me that I couldn't drive in this condition, she'd put me on a plane. She called her travel agent (remember those?) who said a Southwest flight was leaving in less than hour. Happily in Houston, Southwest flies out of Houston-Hobby that was less than 15 minutes away. My friend gave me the money to buy a ticket, told me to tell the clerk that it was an emergency, I had to get on the flight. I went to a clerk, there was a line for the other clerk, but this one was counting something. I did as my friend said and he stopped what he was doing and got me a ticket. Back in 1984 we did have to go through scanners and had to have our stuff x-rayed, but I only had my purse to be x-rayed. I had already ditched anything that might set off the metal detectors. There wasn't a line, I grabbed my purse and sprinted down to the gate. They had been told I was coming, they closed the door behind me. It is the day after Thanksgiving, most people were in a good mood, and the steward gave a rather comic routine of the safety spiel. I was not in the mood.