1. i was 11, i think, the first time i took an airplane ride. it was to west virginia. had you asked the 11 year old me how frequent a habit this would become, i would have guessed infrequent at best. alas, sisters move to california, you decide to find yourself all over south america, the next thing you know you've spent more time on planes than you have in the bank or church or both combined, annually of course. you forget your life pre-plane.
but here, hardly anyone has been on a plane. the questions usually go like this: How did you get here? On a plane. Is it really scary? It's so high? No, it's not. You can't really see the ground. Are you really close to the sun? No. You're not...?
Are you really close to the sun? What a statement to knock me back to real-life. How can you describe being on a plane? You just really can't.
2. i had a favorite history teacher in high school whose intro to philosophy was positing that the earth was flat. no one could prove him wrong; no one had proof, until one day i started an argument with him about flight patterns from london to the united states. he insisted it flies over scotland, i demanded that this was due north and the path should be going west. he replied, "it has to do with the curvature....of the flat earth..." and quickly changed the subject.
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