Help Me — I Can’t Stop Staring at This Tiny Airplane!
My wife is traveling home from California today. I know because she texted me to tell me and I just happened to be following her flight on my cell phone. But now I’m forced to ask an uncomfortable question: what on earth is wrong with me? Why am I so obsessed that I have to follow this little picture of an airplane as it moves across my phone screen?
I could play the loving husband card and win tons of accolades from married women everywhere. They would gush to their own husbands and openly wonder why the schmucks don’t love them enough to stare at a phone screen for hours on end. But I won’t do it. I’m bigger than that. Instead, I’m willing to admit that I am a nervous nellie.
By the way, Nervous Nelly would be a great name for a Contra band featured on Little House on the Prairie, if that show were still on the air. Thank goodness it’s not. I don’t know if I could handle any more sugary sweetness from Pa, Ma, and little Laura Ingalls. Gag me with a wooden spoon. But I digress.
The Land That Time Forgot
I admit that I haven’t always been this way. I remember life before we had cell phones. Thinking about it reminds me of The Land that Time Forgot, a 1974 dinosaur flick with special effects less impressive than a 3-year-old boy stealthily picking his nose and eating the boogers without mom noticing.
Before there were cell phones, we just assumed the people we loved would get on the planes they were scheduled to fly on without any intervention from the rest of us. And they did. At least I think so. I don’t recall my father pulling into town in the back of a U-Haul truck when he was supposed to be on a jet plane with Peter, Paul, and Mary.
By the way, how did Peter and Paul end up with Mary? I thought they were originally teamed with Mounds and Almond Joy. Perhaps a little investigative journalism is in order. Or maybe I should just go to the fridge and get a candy bar.
Anyway, we need to get back to the question at hand which, to my dismay, is as follows: what on earth is wrong with me? Why can’t I just accept the fact that my wife is on a plane and screaming through the air in excess of 500 mph? Why can’t I accept the fact that the ride home from the airport is far more dangerous than flying at altitudes high enough to leave a distinguishable mark if said plane ever falls from the sky?
It’s COVID’s Fault
I don’t know the answers to my questions, so I’m going to do what everybody else does when trying to explain seismic changes in cultural behavior: blame COVID. That’s right, dear readers. COVID has changed absolutely everything. The new normal is COVID-enhanced. Everything we do, think, say, and believe is somehow related to COVID.
On second thought, that might not be such a sound strategy. Why? Because trying to rationalize my flight tracking app – and its associated obsessive-compulsive behavior – by blaming it on COVID could result in me having to go to the doctor’s office and get stuck with a needle. Not cool.
I don’t know why I am so motivated to follow my wife’s flight on a tiny screen. I don’t even know if the little airplane is accurate in its depiction of the plane’s current location. For all I know, the flight could be somewhere over central Mexico by now.
All I can tell you is that my wife is supposed to land in Missouri at any moment. Yay! We will both get to repeat our respective processes when she boards the next flight to Orlando. I have a whole night of screen staring ahead of me. Should I pop some popcorn?
