I love getting high. I know what you must be thinking, but get your mind out of the gutter. Since I was a kid, my favorite place to be has always been up. It does not matter if it is a jungle gym, a tree, the top floor of a skyscraper or a tall chair: I just love looking down. There is, unfortunately, one method of getting high that does not agree with me at all (and no, it is still not weed).
I do not enjoy airplanes one bit. Since my first flight at the tender age of four months old, I have loathed their existence. Some of my terrible flying experiences include the time I was on a return flight, ate a package of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies and promptly vomited them into the airplane bathroom. I guess you could say I tossed my cookies. There was also the most recent time I was on an airplane, when I almost passed out from claustrophobia. I am not even claustrophobic—airplanes are just that cramped. Also, every single time I fly, no matter what I do, my ears refuse to pop and just hurt for a full two days.
Some of the most common phobias are heights and flying, and it is easy to understand why. When you are on a plane, there is no control over your situation. If you are in a car, you at least have a chance to swerve off the road before you crash. Airplanes leave you at the fate of a pilot who might not even exist. My theory is that the announcements over the intercom are prerecorded and the pilot just sleeps the whole time. Airplanes are also allowed to fly with a worrying number of missing or broken parts; that is, any number at all. All aircraft have a Minimum Equipment List, which is a list of all of the items on the airplane that have to be in working order to be able to fly safely. The fact that this list exists is very concerning. My ideal Minimum Equipment List would have every part of the plane included.
Airplanes may be bad, but the process of getting on one is even worse. Airports were designed specifically to destroy the human mind. Going through the TSA makes my IQ drop several points. It does not even make me feel any safer. According to Forbes, as of 2017, TSA agents miss up to 70 percent of what they are supposed to find. When undercover investigators from the Department of Homeland Security tested checkpoints by sneaking in fake weapons (such as guns, knives and explosives), TSA agents failed to detect them an alarmingly high percentage of the time—and this is a vast improvement from a similar test administered two years prior, in which the fake weapons made their way through security 95 percent of the time. With this in mind, we might as well get rid of the TSA altogether. I have never even gone into their “random” selection process, which is about as random as the direction the sun rises.
Airplanes are all of the worst qualities of a school bus at 35,000 feet in the air. I would happily go back to the days of cross-country railroad travel if it meant getting rid of these nausea machines for good. The only thing airplanes are good for is jumping out of, because skydiving is objectively the coolest thing ever. If you have ever traveled by plane, I pity you. Please stop subjecting yourself to such torture, because I just cannot condone that kind of behavior.Is there something in your life that’s raising your cortisol levels above the healthy amount? Shoot me an email at oarnold@drew.edu and I just might insult it.
Ollie Arnold is a sophomore majoring in mathematics and minoring in computer science.
