I have a confession - despite years of living overseas and the countless plane trips I´ve taken in my life, when I was a kid, takeoffs scared the shit out of me. Until my early teens, I was legitimately convinced every single plane I flew on would upon take off, slip backwards down to earth and crash spectacularly. One of my strongest childhood memories is burying my face in my father´s chest and squeezing his hand, waiting for the plane to level off, ignoring the flight attendants tittering and staring. This conviction that a plane takeoff had every chance of falling back down to earth the minute it left the tarmac was not helped by the fact that Garuda, the national Indonesian carrier, had/has one of the worst safety records for any airline, a fact of which I was well aware thanks to my precocious habit of reading the Jakarta Post, aided by an exceptionally overactive imagination.
Anyway, the reason why I´m mentioning this childhood far is that I´m sure you´ll all be excited to hear that as my Avianca ploane left the tarmac of Miami International, it was hit by air currents/wind/a fucking herd of elephants for all I could tell, careened about, swaying up and down before rapidly declining to the point that I left my stomach somewhere several thousand feet up from where we had been seconds before. For lack of a better description - the plane fell backward and my childhood fears came to life. I hasten to add it was not just me being dramatic - the entire cabin gasped/screeched and clung to their armrests. It took twenty minutes for my heart to beat normally again, and a good hour until my flight became smooth and I lost my conviction I would die before touching South American soil.
I can´t wait to see what other childhood horrors rear their head in the next 3 months.
