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He patiently sits on the stationary plane. He sits in silence anticipating, yet dreading, the inevitable takeoff. He sits and he reads. It’s more like reading a picture book because there are very few words in the safety pamphlet he found in the little pouch connected to the seat in front of him. He sits feeling crowded and uneasy. The plane is full, small, and cramped. The guy next to him is slightly overflowing into his seat. He doesn’t blame his seat partner but instead blames genetics and the average American diet consisting of far too much saturated fat and high fructose corn syrup.
The pilot announces that some sort of panel is somehow preventing fuel from doing something that he doesn’t really care knowing about. He sort of does care about it because he doesn’t want to crash. Well, not exactly.
He sits wondering why larger people breathe louder than smaller people. He also wonders if the larger planes are more or less likely to crash compared to this smaller plane.
His mind shifts back to the pamphlet. He finds it amusing that on the front of it, it just says, “Be Safe.” It kind of sounds like an advertisement to remind kids to wear condoms. He thinks it is probably difficult to make these emergency pamphlets one hundred percent in pictures yet not make the reader feel alarmed. He thinks the authors did a damn good job.
However, there is one problem he has with the pamphlet. It’s this series of pictures describing how to save an infant from a disastrous plane crash. All you really have to do is throw a little life vest on him. No big deal. The kid is wearing a comfortable looking onsie with footie bottoms.
This one guy in an army uniform (not the dressed up kind, but the “I have to report back to base in my practical camo clothes” kind) gets very annoyed when he finds out the spilling over guy is in his seat. They both show each other their tickets that have them sitting in the exact same seat. He thinks to himself they should just share. “A double booking!” the army guy shouts. He thinks to himself that the two people who got double booked should just rock, paper, scissors to decide who gets to stay and who has to go. First come first serve is an outdated method of dealing with situations of this magnitude.
So the infant, in all his blue pajama glory, has his eyes closed the entire time he is being placed within the saving graces of the life vest, all while the plane is probably rocketing hundreds of miles per hour toward the surface of the earth below (panels 2-6). He thinks it kind of looks like a comic book except the artwork is subpar. These panels he finds quite amazing. Either the kid is a really heavy sleeper or the guy who has a head, an arm, but not a body, is really efficient and fast at putting that sucker on him. It really just seems like the kid is dead, but he couldn’t be because his arms are up in the air at the appropriate steps as the crazy limbs guy places the vest on him. The seventh and last panel on infant life saving shows the kid in the life vest floating in the middle of a gigantic body of water at night, with his eyes STILL closed. The last noteworthy thing he finds in the pamphlet is…
Apparently takeoff will be in five to ten minutes and the pilot is overjoyed with the high degree of patience the passengers are displaying throughout this terribly stressful situation.
Well, the last interesting thing in the safety pamphlet is a symbol with high hell shoes with a bold red line shooting diagonally across them. Does this mean no high heels are allowed on planes? He starts searching to see if any females on the plane have high heels on. Nobody in his vision does. Maybe the flight attendants do. No, they just have those fake high heel looking shoes on. The ones with the low heels for more comfort and less sexiness. They really are much more like sneakers than dress shoes or high heels. He concludes that high heels are allowed on the plane, but must be removed and discarded in the case of a life-endangering but exciting scenario, such as a blazing fire inside the plane.
He remembers he needs a haircut.
He realizes in the case of an emergency situation he would be one of the last people to reach an emergency exit just based on his seating situation. This is another reason why first come first serve is really a terrible way to decide things like who has a better chance of survival.
He wonders what his last thoughts would be if the plane were nose-diving into the ground. He attempts to create such an event in his imagination but soon realizes it is impossible to really simulate your dying thoughts.
He sits and hopes takeoff will happen before his mind gets the best of him.
He feels not the least bit uncomfortable that he has chosen to refrain from speaking with the spillover. He can easily live with the decision not to speak to that guy.
He figures that after about four seconds of the plane leaving the ground, his chances of surviving a crash drop by over ninety-nine percent. At least the moment will happen too fast to comprehend a negative or positive thought.
 
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Holy crap dude did you write that? 5/5 I really liked it. Actually that's an understatement, that was brilliant.
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United States24483 Posts
I flew recently after not having flown for a few years so I can sort of relate to the character in the story. What's the deal? You write this? Get it from somewhere? Is it about you? Fiction?
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@ Meapak_Ziphh - Thanks very much!
@ micronesia - I wrote it while I was on a plane going to New York from Wisconsin. I was waiting for takeoff and reading the safety pamphlet while workers were fixing a fuel panel. I wrote it all before takeoff.
The man is a slightly crazier version of myself and the other two characters and their actions are real. My mind, just like the man's, is easily distracted and jumps from one idea to another. I still do need to get a haircut.
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United States24483 Posts
What airline was this that had two people with tickets for the same seat? How was that resolved?
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Delta. And luckily the flight was not full so the army dude just sat in another seat.
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I'm not a fearless person (especially at altitude), but for some reason I don't have a fear of flying--maybe it's because the first time I was on a plane I was four years old and the experience was very uneventful. I couldn't possibly be bored enough to read the emergency instructions O_o
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I was nervous about plane flights for a while too, but then I decided to research on the topic to calm my nerves, and it helped. Supposedly, if someone takes a plane ride everyday, it would take 21 000 years for that person to be in a crash. Also, Delta has almost the worst record in crashes in North America  Search it in Google, it's really interesting to see the odds.
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United States24483 Posts
On March 10 2011 17:30 Loser777 wrote:
I'm not a fearless person (especially at altitude), but for some reason I don't have a fear of flying--maybe it's because the first time I was on a plane I was four years old and the experience was very uneventful. I couldn't possibly be bored enough to read the emergency instructions O_o
Interestingly enough recent studies (I've heard) are showing that 'white-knuckle' flyers, the people who actually read all the safety instructions and know where the emergency exits are etc, have the highest chance (by a great deal) in surviving an emergency situation.
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On March 10 2011 16:29 hacklebeast wrote:
I thought "he" was day9
I think the following is a relevant repost considering the circumstances of this blog:
+ Show Spoiler +On July 19 2008 11:09 Day[9] wrote:
WTF i get caught jacking off all the time
i'm not unlucky, its just standard probability. i beat off alot. seriously, i beat off like if i keep doing it, i'm gonna win something. its only natural people will stumble in eventually
FOR EXAMPLE
so i'm on this direct flight from claremont (my college town) back to kansas city (my home town) for winter break. since its a direct 3 hour flight, its too short for them to have "in flight entertainment," but its so long that i'm gonna be bored out of my god damn mind. so, of course, i'm like "i guess i'm beating off like 5 times during this flight."
its one of those small sized slingshot airplanes that goes really fast but is really unstable and has one tiny ass cramped aisle. so i'm sitting in my anorexic bucket seat w/ my shitty peanuts waiting for the plane to hit a high enough altitude when i finally hear: *ding* "this is your captain speaking, we have reached a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, you are now free to move about the cabin." "bink success!" i think to myself, "the time is right." of course i don't rush to the bathroom, no need for that. why not give myself a little tease. i gently, slowly unbuckle my seatbelt. I stand up, and stretch a little bit. I take a nice slow, leisurely walk to the bathroom at the back of the plane. masturbation this good deserves foreplay of its own.
i get to the bathroom, close the door, and sliiiiiide my pants on down and start working myself. oh holy LORD it's amazing. i mean, i don't know if you know this or not, but i am REALLY good at masturbating. I'm in a 2 square foot, dimly lit bathroom, but i feel so good my back is arching and my foot is cramping and i'm nearly ready to start screaming my own name.
then suddenly, TURBULENCE. AGH SHIT. I HATE turbulence. It's not that it makes me feel sick or nauseated. turbulence makes me feel like i'm about to die. So i'm trying to jack off, and suddenly the jerk in the plane floods my body w/ adrenaline and i grab the handle in the bathroom and i'm like "OH SHIT."
do you know how hard it is to cum when you feel like you're about to die??? I mean seriously, imagine jacking off while there's a guy w/ a loaded gun to your head and he's screaming "C'MON CUM YOU PUSSY, DO IT CUM." You'd be shivering w/ eyes closed, tears streaming down your face as you sputter through little snot bubbles just BEGGING your dick to come. "please cum!!!" you'd weep "i wanna cum soooo bad!!!!!"
so there i am trying to think of every dirty thing possible so i can finally orgasm, but all that's going through my mind is "god i need to reconcile with my dad and tell my brother i love him" etc etc and while i'm distracted in a mess of standard pre-death thoughts, i don't realize that i'm about to cum.
HOLY FUCK i say as i fumble and try to grab some kleenex from the box on the counter. however, in my stuttered panic, i just knock the kleenex box over, hit the "stewardess help button," and i cum directly onto the floor. still in a state of panic i'm like FUCKFUCKFUCK I NEED TO TURN THIS BUTTON OFF so of course i (geniusly) press it like 5 more times trying to turn this off. Naturally, the button just goes *ding ding ding ding*, making my situation seem all the more urgent, and i can hear the stewardess rushing to the door since i appear to be in desperate need of help.
"FOCUS SEAN FOCUS," i think, "I NEED TO HIDE MY DICK." so, (this is genius) i pick up the kleenex box from the floor, pull out 5 pieces of tissue, and i just lay them on top of my erection... so it looks kinda like a little dick tent. so, the stewardess, responding to my urgent spams of the "stewardess help button" proceeds to open the bathroom door just like i knew she was going to. She looks on the ground to see my epic protein stain, looks up at my glorious dicktent, and then you know what happens?? we make eye contact.
so she's looking at me, and i'm looking at her and in general i dislike awkward silences. however, this was an all KINDS of awkward silence, so i figured it was necessary to say something. so, i did the best i could. i look her right in the eye and say "... it is what it is..."
???? why did i say that???? what a stupid thing to say... well... i guess it's hard in that situation to "play it off cool." i can't be like "hey i know smoking isn't allowed on the plane, so do you have a stick of gum??"
so she shuts the door, and i clean myself up and spend another 3 minutes trying to clean up the mass of cum on the floor. even though i did a pretty good job, its damn hard to get that shine out of the laminate flooring. i'm finally done, so i open up the bathroom door to see a line of 10 or so people that's been building up since i went into the bathroom like 20 minutes ago (again, it took my a while since its difficult to cum when you think you're about to die). I get to look across the line of all of em, and say the only sensible thing i can think of:
"for those of you going to use the bathroom, i'd make sure you're wearing shoes."
Anyways, I've completely outgrown any fear of flying, especially after flying around during my senior year of high school for music school auditions and stuff. I've learned that if I sleep through the flight, it's as though I never flew at all. Sleeping makes flying seem like teleportation, though I do regret missing the opportunities for getting free soda.
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United States4796 Posts
Beautifully written. 5/5. 
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I was expecting the plane to crash spectacularly at the end..
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EPT
