Taking Flight

Last week I found myself dropping off and picking up people at Reagan National Airport two days in a row. I will leave out the part where I get lost both times, as per usual, and end up going the extra long way. I had never been to Reagan before last Tuesday. And the really cool thing about Reagan is that when you drive in on 95, the planes have to fly directly above you in order to land and take off. They come SO CLOSE. It kinda feels like a movie or something.

Every time I fly, I feel like a little kid on Christmas as soon as the plane lifts off the ground. There is something so unreal about it. If you told people 100 years ago that by the end of the century, air would be the primary form of mass, long-distance travel, they would think you were outside your mind. So I never cease to be amazed at the complete surreality (is that a word?) of taking flight.

And then I think about my dad. He's a pilot. He gets to fly every day. And while I am aware that airplanes are different from his Army helicopters, I always wonder if pilots feel the same every time they take off. Or if they realize just how cool their jobs are. Not everyone gets to defy the laws of gravity for a living.

Every time I see a plane in the sky, I start to wonder who is on it, where they're going, and why they're going there. And if I'm on the plane, I wonder the same things, but more. I like to make up life stories about my cabin-mates and decide whether they're leaving or coming home, what they do for a living, and sometimes I develop these epic stories about how there are people on the plane who are long lost best friends and bump into each other in line for the lavatory.

Cause the world is funny that way. It brings people together and pulls them apart a million and a half times a day. You pass another car on the highway. For all you know, the driver of that car could end up being the president of the USA in a couple decades. You hold a door open for someone at the grocery store, who's to say that he or she isn't going to be your boss at the job you start next year? The person you sit next to on the plane, you may never see again. But then you never know.

So we go about our daily lives, generally keeping to ourselves, and waiting for the world to send us crashing into our next exciting discovery. And in the meantime, I'll keep watching the planes.