We have our special first times which might include our first day of school, first kiss, first time driving, and the infamous first haircut. One of these experiences for me was my first time flying.
It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and I was chosen to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington DC with about fifty other kids from Texas. The only problem was that even though I had been on many vacations, I had never flown.
The trip was right after I got out of school, and I was so busy with school that I didn’t have much time to think about the trip or what flying would be like.
My parents dropped me off at the hotel in Dallas the night before the flight; we were all staying there, as a group. The next morning we would fly to DC and stay there for eight days. I still hadn’t given any thought to the fact that I would be flying for the first time the next day.
I made it through security, and waited to board the plane. I talked with a few guys that I met about flying, but they had flown before so they weren’t worried about it and told me there’s nothing to it. The more I thought about flying, the more I thought about all the things that could possibly go wrong. The more I thought about it the more anxious I became, and my palms started to sweat.
As we boarded the plane I was trying to stay calm and not freak out, but I kept thinking about how much I hated heights. My seatmate was girl one year older than me—and who probably thought I was crazy, because I was so scared. It was that obvious.
I was trying to stay calm while talking to her and it just so happened that she asked me if I had ever flown before. I told her that I had never flown before, and that I was kind of freaking out—but thankfully she had, and she explained everything that would happen, and that it would all be alright.
When the plane took off everything went okay...until we got into the air. I was sitting by the window on top of the wing. I never knew how much bend a wing would have, but apparently they are designed to bend quite a bit.
My seatmate told me she had sat in the same spot before, and it scared her too. But she was looking at me like I was an idiot.
As we gained altitude the plane leveled out, and it felt like the plane was falling, to me—but no one else on the plane seemed concerned.
This only added to the paranoia, but I just kept talking to my new friend the whole time, and everything gradually got better. I never actually thought I was going to throw up, but I did feel really nauseous at several points during take-off. Maybe I did throw up in my mouth, a little.
When we landed, I sincerely thanked my new friend because she really did help me out—even though I was a complete stranger. She told me she was able to relate to what I was going through because, she had the same problems the first time she flew. This small act of courtesy was nothing major for her to do, but it was greatly appreciated by me.
She could have just thought I was crazy and not talked to me at all, but instead she actually took time to talk to me instead of reading or listening to her iPod like all the other people on the plane. Just by her talking to me, I was able to keep my mind off of the fact that I was flying in a heavy aluminum tube—and her conversation kept me from thinking about all the things that could happen to that aluminum tube.
Common courtesy is something that is taken for granted all too often. We don’t think about the little things we do, and how they affect other people in so many ways. My seatmate probably never knew and never will know how much she helped me just by talking to me. To her it was nothing, but to me it was a way to keep from being scared—it actually made the flight bearable.
We were seated beside each other again on the flight back home, and everything went much smoother than the first time. Suddenly I was a routine flier.