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I hate air travel.

I do it every other week for work, even though I am petrified of it. The only way it could be any worse is if I had to sit next to a bunch of cockroaches and spiders while giving a speech and getting my blood drawn. Thank god (see?) my frequent flyer status almost always bumps me up to first class; at least when we crash, I will have a free drink in my hand.

Every time I get on a plane, I have to come to some sort of inner peace, some sort of cosmic resolve; I know the plane is gonna crash & I'm going to die a fiery death preceded by a terror-filled few minutes of plummeting towards the earth at terminal velocity inside an aluminum tube filled with shrieking, bowel-evacuating fellow human beings. I make peace with my mortality, and mentally utter a little prayer...which makes me even more tense, because if there is a God up there, He/She/It knows that I only use Him/Her/It as a Mail-Order Fear Catalog (when not wholeheartedly challenging His/Her/Its existence in the first place):

"Please God, let me pass this exam"

"Please God, make him like me!"

"Please God, let me not be pregnant"

"God, if you get rid of this hangover for me, I will never EVER drink again"

"Please God, strike dead the entire cast of 'Full House' this very minute, and fling all celluloid and digital evidence of it into Hell's eternal fires"

and so on.

Wish me luck; I get on a plane at 12:30 today.