Academia: the Last Refuge of the Coward

Made it back home from Singapore. Trip was about thirty hours, door to door. Part of that, however, was discovering that although I apparently have no problem making it halfway across the planet and back, I cannot remember my damn bus pass for the last three miles home. Also, I was a quarter short of bus fare home. So some of that time was spent alternately staring at passers-by and hoping they would sense my intense need for a quarter and making collect calls home hoping a housemate would eventually receive one (they did).

While this was frustrating, the worst bit, probably, was the final hour of the flight into the US. There was some really nasty turbulence, which started with a great "We're all going to die" moment, where the plane dropped suddenly and dramatically enough to make about half the people on it shriek like little girls. I did not participate in the shrieking. I was half-asleep, dreaming of stomping to death the demonic toddler across the aisle. So when my stomach, in accordance with the laws of inertia, attempted to leave my body through my nose, I was too disorganized to attempt a shriek but instead flailed wildly with my left arm and managed, after some bleary-eyed panic, to get a grip on the armrest. Because that would save me if the plane happened to come to a sudden stop. Against the ground. Or something. If I'm going down, then I'm taking this damn armrest with me, even if I have to dislocate my shoulder to do it.

After this kicker of a flirtation with gravity, there was a stunned silence, and then the intercom crackled briefly into life: "Uh, flight attendants, please be seated." Both awesome and timely. I tried to imagine stewardesses lodged halfway into bulkheads, like heroines in a Salvador Dali painting.

As my life in academia closes off more and more job options for me, there are some jobs I long after sadly, sure I would have been pretty good at them, if I'd only taken the chance. Being a pilot is not one of them. Besides the fact that I'm legally blind without my corrective lenses and easily distracted, I could just never manage the PR side of things. Teaching has taught me that being in a position of authority causes me to become inappropriately honest ("Yeah, I had a nine-year-old help grade your papers." "Can anyone tell me what this piece is about? Because I sure as hell don't know.") I can't imagine this translating very well into the cockpit:

Dramatic drop in altitude; passengers scream, flight attendants and beverage carts go hurling through the air like feathers at a cockfight. Plane levels off, passengers continue to whimper in fear.
*crackle*
"Uh, sorry, everyone. I dropped my bagel."
*crackle*

Yeah, we're all better off with me in the back abusing the free booze and trying to read Pyncheon while drunk and sleep-deprived. Score one for academia.