Attention in the terminal: my fear of flying has officially been downgraded to "my mild discomfort" of flying.

I've never been a strong flier, you see -- when I was younger, I had to deal with the perils of motion sickness, something that generally has never made me eager to travel in any capacity, and over time, every bout of nausea, every headache, became another good reason to just stay at home rather than play the role of adventure seeker. Planes, trains, automobiles… nuts to them -- I like my couch.

Oddly enough, it wasn't always like this -- the anxiety, I mean. I grew up loving planes, being obsessed with reading books and information on military aircraft, and went through a phase where I thought about trying to get into the Air Force Academy. Flying was cool! But I eventually came to the realization that I was much more suited for a degree in music than I was a career in the military, and, well… here we are.

I openly admit that all my fears are fairly unfounded, that "statistically speaking" flying's the safest form of travel, blah blah blah, and my own wife is quick to remind me that she's had much worse flying experiences than I've had, notably including a seat on a transcontinental flight that was next to an old woman wearing a diaper. All the same, we define our own experiences, and I knew what I didn't like.

In the early winter of 2000, I decided that I needed to take my first real vacation. I was out of college, working steadily on a career, and was feeling more like an adult than I probably was. It was time to take my first "adult" trip, and, in the process, get over my unfounded fears of flying. So I made arrangements to fly to Connecticut to spend some quality time with Heather, one of my college friends who left Ohio to pursue her nursing career in New Haven.

At this point, it had been about ten years since I'd last flown, and I'd really forgotten about what it was like, so what my mind couldn't recall was completed with a filling of anxiety. My good friend Laura was doing the unenviable favor of dropping me off at the airport, and on a morning when the skies looked like a sink full of dirty dishwater, she suddenly found herself in the position of having to talk me down to an acceptable level of insanity. Thankfully, she's always been skillful at wrangling my neuroses, psychological cowgirl that she is. Putting on her best "storyteller" voice, she talked about how much she loved to fly, especially on gray days like these when the plane rises through the clouds into a sun-filled sky…

It got me on the plane. I was still gripping a bit, but it got me on the plane.

My flight was on a regional jet with maybe 40 seats total running in pairs along a central aisle. I'd never flown on an aircraft like this, and therefore didn't know that, being more nimble than a large aircraft, takeoff and ascent would be somewhat more… aggressive than I was expecting. Motion sickness medicine be damned, my gut wasn't so happy with that.

With head back on headrest and hands folded in lap to approximate some measure of serenity, I focused on breathing as my internal organs started a debate as to which direction they'd like to travel. All I had to do was make it through the climb, and I'd feel better when we reached cruising altitude.

The "cruising altitude" thing was all well and good, but about a half an hour into it, I was still feeling a little queasy. The lone flight attendant, a larger fellow that appeared to be of Polynesian stock, came around with the drink cart. I nursed some orange juice and tried to settle in with some light reading. The guy sitting next to me made no attempts to chat with me, for which I was very grateful because I hate talking to strangers even when I'm on my game.

Descending into the Hartford airport was a mixed event -- on one hand, the flight was over on the other, we apparently had to circle. The landing gear pushed itself down, and we came in with a fairly gentle thud, braked, and swung around to taxi to the terminal. I stared grimly out of the window and tried to relax.

Urp.

Bag, bag, bag! Where was the damn bag?!? It had just been there a few minutes ago, tucked behind the Skymall catalog…

Found it. Used it. Wished I hadn't had that orange juice. The guy sitting next to me conspicuously looked like he was ignoring my existence. Wait, did I just boot on an airplane?

Round two.

We docked at the jet way and I decided to have a moment of social panic -- what was I supposed to do with the bag? I gently folded over the top a few times, and left it sitting on the floor in front of my seat when I deplaned. I kind of figured it made more sense than handing it to somebody as I left. I sat by the gate and waited for Heather to arrive, wishing that I'd packed a toothbrush in my carry-on. The flight attendant got off the plane as I was huddled in a corner decompressing, and when he saw me I swear he gave me an ugly sort of look. Man, totally not my fault. Really didn’t want to put either of us through that.

Thankfully, there have been no repeats of that morning, although I had a rough flight back as well (and skipped the OJ that time). Since then, it's gotten progressively easier, and I've been back to Connecticut, out to Los Angeles, and even had a transcontinental journey to Europe with my wife (the seasoned traveler) which, aside from a horrible experience at the Philadelphia International Airport that had nothing to do with the actual flight (although I wasn't a fan of US Airways at that point in the trip, either, OR the movie The Lake House), appears to have put most of my travel anxiety to rest. I'm pretty sure of this because I just got back from another trip to southern California, which, to paraphrase Maverick from Top Gun, was comparatively a walk in the park. Maybe surviving a 12-hour journey home from Germany was proof enough for me that I need not fear taking flight. Maybe I've just mellowed over the last seven years. All the same, while I feel that I can now handle flying with a certain peace that was previously lacking, I still can't get the theme from Airplane! out of my head whenever I'm in a plane taxiing for takeoff.

Surely I'm kidding you when I say that. Nope, that's just how my mind works. The anxiety is always there in some way or another.

And don't call me "Shirley."