Story Time With Q – Win a $350 Dollar Airline Gift Card

Watching planes is fun. Flying on planes is even better. Even though I have no memory of it, I flew on an airplane as an infant. I was told that I did a great job and hardly cried at all. I was also told that my Mom had a few shots of booze before she breast fed me the morning of the flight. What ever the truth may be, I get the sense that I enjoyed flying.

I have a temper. The thing that gets that temper hotter than anything is stupidity. I can't stand it. What makes it even worse is when the "stuped" bug hits me. But, sometimes stupid can be amusing. And even as I just explained about my love of flying, the biggest moment of "Stupeed" in my life happened on an airplane.

It was the Summer before my Senior Year of High School. I have two older cousins. One of the cousins was married and living in Germany with her solider husband. Her sister wanted to visit, but couldn't go alone, so she recruited me. We were both 17 at the time, so I guess two 17 year old's are better than one? Parenting, it's a crap shoot.

We left from Bismarck North Dakota. Our itinerary had us flying from Bismarck to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Detroit, Detroit to London, London to Frankfurt. We had a 5 hour layover in Detroit. My cousin and I were the first to arrive at our departure gate, and the plane that was waiting to take us over the ocean was a 727. That too f###in small to fly over water. That was my opinion then, and it's my opinion now. It must have been someone else's opinion as well since we suddenly had an extra stop in Boston. It was a good thing I enjoyed flying because at this point we've taken off and landed three times and still haven't left American soil.

Turns out the flight from Boston to London was with a 747. Now that's a plane you hope over the pond with. We'd been flying all day and into the night. I was getting a bit drowsy so I took a nap. When I woke up I looked out of my window and saw, what looked like, a land mass in the distance. I guess I slept longer than I thought, because that had to be the English coastline. Sleeping is the key to flying. It goes by so fast. About an hour later they started to bring out food, which I though was strange since I was sure we would be landing soon. I checked the window again and the land mass was still in the distance. About the same distance actually. I would've asked my cousin what she thought, but she was sitting in the back of the plane, which in 1984 was called the "Smoking Section".

Well we had a meal. Watched a movie. Had another meal, and the land mass was still out there in the same damn place. We were making no progress. Was I going to be on this plane the rest of my life? What the Hell!

Soon the sun began to rise. It was then that I realized the "land mass" that I'd been looking at the whole flight was, I'm sure you've already guessed, yes, the wing. STUPID! I thought the wing of the plane was coast of England. I was pissed. But, after 31 years I can now see it as a silly story.

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