A Flight to Forget

I was assigned this essay and wrote a really horrible first draft, which was a closed form essay. After our meeting I built off of one paragraph that you told me was the closest to a narrative. I went back to the drawing board and just turned it more into a story.

A Flight to Forget

5 AM, and my alarm clock starts buzzing. I begin preparing for the long journey I am about to embark on. A 12 hour flight to Israel, I pack up my last few things for the backpack I will be carrying with me on the flight.

30 minutes later I am already getting dropped off at the airport. Now comes the hard part checking in and passing the security checkpoint. This process is long and tiring, after finally passing it now I have to wait about an hour and a half to board the plane.

Waiting to board the plane is just an excruciating process, well everything at the airport is.

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After my wait I boarded the plane and got into my seat praying that no one annoying would be seated around me. With my luck I got children who were between the ages of three to five completely surrounding me north, east, west, and south. What I am slowly realizing is that this flight will either be hell or just normal, if these babies and children ever stop crying and whining. Don’t take it the wrong way it is not that I dislike kids or anything it’s just that for a 12 hour flight where you can escape crying you do not want to get stuck around so many kids of that age.

Right before take-off I remember everything. Everyone pushing and shoving to get all their bags in the overhead storage bins, the flight attendants getting angered with people telling them to be seated. All the screens in the plane turn on and give the same white screen up until the pilot turns on the GPS system and then all you see is the plane in Miami and a map that goes all the way to Jerusalem with a blue line in between Miami and Jerusalem. Then right after the TVs come on the flight attendants get up in between the isles grabbing the pamphlets that are stuck right in front of our seats and life jacket. With these things they actually expect people to follow along on the pamphlets and give a demonstration of how to inflate your life jacket should anything happen mid-flight and we need to land in the ocean.

Immediately after this you hear the turbines whirring starting up and giving the plane a little momentum to taxi around the landing strip. The seatbelt signs come on, which indicate that everyone should remain seated. Then, bam just like that you feel the g force kick in and you are pushed back a little bit in your seat, your ears start to pop from the sudden change in altitude, at this point you’re strapped into the ride for good or bad.

At this point I gave up on the children around me silencing themselves. I remembered that I had a new book and my iPod. First thing I did was plug in my headphones and drown out the drone of the engine and the crying of the children. Now I could finally focus on reading this book for the next 12 hours. I pulled out my new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I was intent of finishing this book before the end of the flight, which gave me 12 hours to read through 870 pages. Once I picked up the book and opened the first page it was done, I was in love with this series and couldn’t put the book down even for a minute. Although I was extremely tired and my eyes began to feel strained after a short period of time I just pushed through it. It was the only way for me to kill time on this flight especially since sleep wasn’t an option with all the commotion going on around me.

Thank god I had this book or else I really would not have made it through that flight, every page turned was more interesting than the last. At some point in the book they started traveling in a convoy of broom sticks and I couldn’t help but wish that that was really possible. The problem on planes for me has always been my height. My knees get stuck in the metal in the seats in front of me so as a kid reading about flying broomsticks the only thought that went through my head was unlimited leg space.

The combination of headphones and Harry Potter almost had me forgetting I was on a flight to begin with, I just completely zoned out and felt like I was taken somewhere else where I wasn’t squished, there were no kids crying around me, and no people who kept nudging me from the seat right behind me. From the beginning of the flight when I first took out the book and began to read until when I finally checked the time again about three quarters of the flight were over. 9 hours gone just like that and I hadn’t even realized. I made it a point to not check my watch again so that the last three hours would pass by as quick as the first 9.

The pilot came on the P.A. system saying that we were within an hour of the destination, at this point I had a short amount of the book left but still I freaked I wanted to finish the book before we landed. I picked up the pace a little and finished the book about five or ten minutes before I heard the landing gear pop out from the bottom of the plane. The landing gear came out and we started our descent into Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. I finally made it, and after all the hellish thoughts I had that this flight would be horrid I couldn’t have been more wrong.

An hour and a half later after getting through customs, inbound flight security, a 45 minute cab ride, I finally arrived at my destination which was my grandmother’s house in Jerusalem. This wasn’t my first time coming so I knew what to expect as far as how long it would take to get there. However I was greeted by my whole family waiting for me there. I saw all my cousins who were about the same age as me give or take a few years here and there.

When they saw the book in my hand they asked me a few questions in Hebrew wondering if I planned on reading it while I was staying there in Israel. I simply looked at them and told them that I had already finished it, they responded by asking me when I started reading it. I told them that I began the book as soon as I hopped on the plane, the looks on their faces were priceless with their jaws dropped staring at the book that was thicker than my head.