in your eyes

For the first time since flying anywhere as an adult, I shed no tears. Sure, I didn't enjoy the experience: I had to have physical contact with my boarding pass at every second (and made sure the kids knew they COULD NOT PUT THEIRS DOWN); I had to Lamaze breathe my way through some turbulance; my neck is still a bit tight where I was the monkey in the middle between WB and some (thankfully scrawny, but still) guy I didn't (and still don't) know. But, nothing was so overwhelming that it had to leak out through my tear ducts. Small steps, my friends, small steps.

There were some interesting sights along the way. There are many reasons I don't expect my children to ever take up smoking, but seeing the Room of Shame at Dulles might be the clincher. Inside the plexi-glassed walls of this small room (maybe 12x12?) were about 20 sad individuals, sitting there in the smoke filled haze, staring blankly ahead and trying to OD on nicotine.

Our stay at O'Hare was a bit more exciting, as we landed in terminal B, had to get ourselves over to F2D (which did not have us leaving security, however, so I really have nothing to complain about. Plus actually walking more than 20 steps at a time was nice, too.)* Anyhow, we got ourselves some Chili's to Go salads and parfaits, and were settling in to watch the weather in Quebec City (since that's where the plane before ours was headed) when we were relocated to F11, which is a much more old school gate. Down the hall and down the stairs we went, crammed into a huge room of our own (with NO smoking allowed, however), all of us waiting for 5 different flights. Each one would get called, people would line up and head out onto the runway to walk up the stairs onto the plane. Lather, rinse, repeat.


*Grammar freaks out there: where do I put this period? Inside the parenthesis? Outside? One in and one out? I always struggle with such details, and you know how they impact my stories...

Now, those of you who grew up playing obsessively with Little People, those airplane steps are as steep as recreated in plastic form. Going up wasn't a problem, but coming down.... I was working hard not to have my own SNL*. Actually, having come down those stairs I think Chevy may have been a bit hard on President Ford, although Ford didn't have to carry his own luggage while navigating his way down... but still, that was not easy.


*WB was having the very same thoughts as he tried to get safely to the tarmac. Ah, marriage. One mind, one soul, hundreds of bad jokes.

In keeping with the tradition, each of these posts will include a 4x6 picture giveaway: all you have to do is comment back to me (on the blog directly or on FB whenever it decides to feed in). The title of this blog is a reference to an older movie where the girl was petrified to fly, and the boy eventually goes with her on a plane, and talks her through take off. It's the most perfect movie ending, because when they get to cruising altitude and he's saying something about as soon as the captain turns off the seat belt sign they'll be safe... and the movie cuts to black with the airplane 'ding'. Earlier in the movie he'd stood outside her window, in his trench coat, playing Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes through his huge 1980s boom box. Name the movie, or the actor with the boom box, and you'll get this shot:

(And yes, I sang this song to myself, and it worked. We all have our own ways of coping... and after our layover in DC, I am thankful I use music and not cigarettes.)