Fear of flying
I'm scared of flying. I hate the enclosed space, the complete helplessnes insofar that you're entirely at the mercy of the actions of others and Newton's Laws.

This is a bugger, because I'm a pretty frequent flyer in my job, and I was told I wasn't allowed to hitch to Seoul.

In a fit of self-analysis, I've worked out the exact time this state of affairs came to be -when I was a sixteen-year-old Air Cadet.

They send you up in some elastic-band-and-sticky-tape two-seater aircraft, where the former RAF fighter pilot throws the thing about like a madman in the hope that you might be impressed enough to sign your life away into the Armed Services.

Except, on this particular flight, the previous passenger had shown his appreciation of the pilot by bowking rich, brown vomit all over the rear cockpit of the plane.

It had not, sadly, been cleared up properly, and the second Flt-Lt Farquar-de-farquar pulled the stick back and put the plane into a loop, gravity took hold and the cold, stinking contents of Cadet Chunder's stomach came flying towards me.

I was covered head-to-toe in somebody else's chunder (I even found - after landing - diced carrots under my helmet), and I reacted in the only way a callow youth would when assaulted this way whilst his horizon spun in front of his eyes.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAARCH!" I said. "YAAAAAAAAARCH!"

I admit that I panicked a little from there, and the rest of the flight was punctuated with my pitiful pleas to get the crate back on the ground.

I was cured of wanting to be a fighter pilot, and sweat like Shannon's stepfather in PC World whenever I set foot in airport buildings.

Flying: Not natural
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 10 Apr 2008, 15:30, 2 replies)

Well
That's worth a click just for the mental image I got from the phrase "diced carrots under my helmet".
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Thu 10 Apr 2008, 18:31, closed)

^ What gleeballs said
Yeeek!
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 11 Apr 2008, 12:29, closed)