Irish Itinerant

I hate flying. I really do. But, it’s not why you might think. At one point in my life, I used to teach people to fly, so it is not that I’m afraid of it. I just really despise many of my fellow passengers.

Flight #1
My seatmate is fairly pleasant. During engine start, the air from those little vents above you stops coming out. The cabin is getting a little toasty and she starts putting her hand up to the vent, turning it this way and that. After a few more seconds, she’s back at it - feeling for air and twisting that little vent.

“They’re using it to start the engine“, I say.

“Oh, I know“, says she, followed by some incoherent mumble that I really was trying not to listen to anyway. Fortunately for me, she was in no mood to chat as she would be spending the next two hours feeding herself from the feed grocery bag of goodies she had taken aboard for the trip. I was full just watching her. So full that after we deplaned, I stuck a finger down my own throat to purge. I definitely felt better.

Flight #2 (a.k.a. “the return flight”)
She’s in the middle seat. She does not speak english, and had successfully commandeered the armrests on either side prior to my arrival. Fair enough, I think to myself. I hate the middle seat and will do anything to avoid it. I’d actually like to meet the fella that invented the middle seat and eviscerate severly chastise him. My tactics even include flying unnecessary trips to maintain some type of frequent flyer status enabling me to choose my seat. On this trip, my seat is by the window, so I’ll just snuggle up to the sidewall and nap for an hour or two.

Or, so I thought.

The armrest is not enough for this witch. She begins to invade my space. A bump here, a bump there. I sigh loudly and give her a bit of a dirty look. Now we’re all set, I think to myself. She knows I’m unhappy with her wandering elbows and will respect the invisible vertical boundaries of my rented space.

Wrong - it gets worse. I had resumed my wall-snuggling and was pretending to be asleep. Her belly will not allow her to read a magazine in front of her. Logical solution? Use the “empty” space above my lap so that she can keep her magazine horizontal. Flip. Flip. Flip. She flips pages like she’s cracking a whip. Each flip brings with it a blast of air. The magazine creeps closer and closer until the pages are scraping my arm. Her elbows are bumping my rib cage. I then pretend to wake up, with an unfortunately aggressive brush of the offending magazine. A slight look of confusion from me to her, and I settle back against the wall. All sorted, I think.

Flip, draft. Flip, draft. Flip, draft. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT TAKE? I open my eyes wake up again, and simply reach out and twist the little tab that holds my tray up against the seat in front of me. Tray drops with a bit of a bang right on top of the stupid magazine. Right, all set for a coke and a bag of sun chips from the lady with the trolley.

Right after our complimentary beverage service, the guy sitting in the aisle in the next row up informs her that he has completed the work that he had to do and is now ready to swap seats. You see her husband is in the middle seat of that row and they want to sit together. Of course, I had sort of figured this out about an hour or so ago. But, such a swap would have entailed sitting in a middle seat and it was part of the reason I had my eyes closed was asleep.

Like I said, I don’t care for that middle seat much.

My name is Mark, and I’m a smoker. There, I’ve said it. I like smoking, or at least that’s what I tell myself. In fact, I hate smoking. It’s a shitty little habit, and something I wish I’d never started. I’d like to find that little 14 year-old knacker that I used to be and give him a good clip across the ear. What the hell was I thinking?

Well, time machines don’t exist. Or, if they do, they’re probably not real reliable like. So I’m thinking about opting for “the shot” as my weapon of choice. I’ve tried the nasty gum (nothing like getting addicted to the damned gum), and my attempt with the patch was a successful as our current squabble in Iraq.

I figure on going for this supposed painless treatment in about 2-3 weeks. I have to go to South America next week for about 5 days, so I probably won’t be making the arrangements until I get back. Plus, it’ll give me a little more time to smoke while I contemplate becoming smoke-free.

Pathetic, I know.

So this’ll be my first post in some type of journey to understand myself and my surroundings. I grew up in Ireland and moved to Canada when I was 15. From there, my family made our way to the US, which is where we (at least most of us) remain today. I’m 35 now, so 20 years after I we left the “auld country.” Much has changed, and Ireland is a very different place now from when we left. Maybe as a result of moving countires every few years as a teenager, I have a skewed view on many things. Maybe everyone has their own skewed view and I’m just trying to grasp mine.

Anyway, welcome.