As I sit here, on a flight back from Miami, turbulent as usual, I feel compelled to tell you about my Valentine’s day weekend. Maybe I’m being a little unclear as to the connection between the two but just give me a second. For those of you who don’t know me well (here’s hoping at least one person reading this won’t be reading because they’re my friend, I made them and then stood over their shoulder to make sure), my boyfriend and I have been together for over 3 years (3 years 5 months and 2 days, happy anniversary). I think it’s safe to say we know a significant amount about each other.
For example, I know he’s a physics major, and he knows that I find it difficult to remember what exactly he studies in physics, and even more difficult to pronounce it. I know he loves heights and roller coasters and he knows that I don’t like to be lifted more than a foot in the air. He knows I don’t like to be teased and I know he’s going to do it anyway. All of this is important, because for our Valentine’s day weekend, Jay and I went on a flying lesson. Hey there’s the turbulence again.
When I say Jay and I, I mean it. I came in the itty bitty teeny weeny air plane with him. Thankfully (for many reasons- one of which being that I’m only a little over 5 feet tall) neither of us is over 300 pounds, because the plane was so small that it wouldn’t have been able to carry my hypothetical rolley polley self along with Jay and our flight instructor. So all those hours at the gym paid off and we found the flight school (located in snowy Nashua, NH) and parked our car conveniently on a giant slab of ice that I assume at some point during the year is also a functioning parking lot. The flight school itself was small, and the instructor took Jay and I up to teach us a little about the airplane. And then Jay taught him physics…and then I took pictures of the two of them. And then it was time to finally see the beast.
If there was any real humor in the world my 5th grade English teacher would right now out of nowhere slap herself in the face…what was that about sentence fragments Ms. Jordan? Whelp no use dwelling on lost grammar lessons now.
Back to flying: we got outside to see our darling little aircraft tied by a thick white chord to the ground. After giving us our headsets, our instructor took us on a trip around the plane to check the engine, the wings, the gas, the everything else. By this point a little voice inside me was saying “Don’t go! Don’t go! My sedan is bigger than this airplane!”-fortunately the louder voice was telling me how cool it would be to see him fly. So we board the airplane and go through another fifty routine checks: I notice the airplane comes equipped with ashtrays…when did they stop manufacturing planes with those again? The doors close, we plug in our headsets and the radio says “Bravo Bravo you are clear for takeoff.” Bravo bravo was our name, well really there were two just B’s on the side of the aircraft and using a B-word saves the trouble of getting confused with another equally teeny aircraft somewhere whose name is Dingo Dingo.
Wait a minute..takeoff?!? Before I knew it, we were up in the air shifting from left to right as our mini-plane struggled to hold its own against the bitter Nashua winds. First we turned left, then we turned right, and then the flight instructor thought it would be fun to just jiggle the plane. Let. Me. Out.
Hearing my feeble whining in the back seat, Jay stopped jiggling just long enough for me to take a look out the windows and see the beautiful Nashua landscape (no sarcasm here, when you have one person per every square mile there’s quite a lot of nature in between). It was honestly breathtaking and for a moment I could just look outside and take it in. Not to worry, it wasn’t long before the flight instructor gave a smirk and said “do you know what happens when a plane stalls?” You’d think he would have given us a little time to think of a witty answer before cutting all the power to the plane and letting us…drop.
Well…I guess…Now I know. While my brain was re-making all of its previous neural connections and my stomach was doing its best not to digest my heart, I took a glance at Jay’s face. He was beaming. All in all: pretty worth it.
Resisting the urge to be overly dramatic, totally clichĂ©, none too hygenic, and kiss the ground, I settled for just a clichĂ©: a picture of Phil (instructor) and Jay (boyfriend) shaking hands in front of the plane. Good job guys, way to scare the living S**t out of me. But in all honesty, jokes aside, I recommend the experience to anyone. As a matter of fact if you’re considering this experience, ask me for the name of our flight instructor: jiggling or not, the man knows his stuff.
I guess this Valentine’s day even I learned something new about myself: sometimes it’s worth it to put my own fears aside for someone that I love. (Awwww)