Flying--Wing or Front Rows?

As you all probably know by now--I am not the best flyer. I don't like getting in a plane. I know all about the logical reasons why it's safe to fly. I've been told over and over again. I have a couple of people I email regularly panicked before I get on a plane begging for confirmation that I'm not boarding a deathtrap. Remembering about a plane that crashed 26 years ago in some country that I can't remember the name of, knowing that my fate is inexplicably tied to that crash.

One friend was particularly patient, explaining email after email why it was safe to fly, why SWA is such a safe airline, why turbulence was not automatically going to cause the plane to drop out of the sky. But he stopped. He realized it was a useless exercise. His response is always the same now, always four words, "It will be fine". I live for those four words, knowing so far he's been right.


I was having dinner with another friend on Thursday and we stumbled upon the subject of flying, so I told him how much I hated flying. That if we plummet to the earth, there is nothing I can do. "Ah, you're a control freak." Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?


Now that I get to preboard I'm usually the first one on the plane and I've started to talk to the pilots--"smooth flight today?" "Well, no. We'll be hitting some turbulence." Yesterday, after the pilot told me and I sighed a big sigh, he asked me--"Would you rather I lied to you?" Of course, I said yes, because I wanted that moment of knowing everything would be fine, but then I said no, because the truth is always better, right?