Thursday

I've become a nervous flier. I've mentioned this here almost as often as I've mentioned airplanes. This nervousness is some awesome brand of irony considering how much I travel. Putting armchair labels on things is shorthand I know, but my primary nervousness seemed to begin on my first flight after September eleventh, 2001. Perhaps that's arbitrary. That terrible aviation violence took place during a five-year dry spell between my flights to Port-Au-Prince in 2000 and México City in 2005. Obviously, many other things happened to me during that half-decade (and frankly, the events of nine-eleven even didn't happen to me, except in some collective entitlement sense). But that short Mexican flight was terrifying in a way I'd never felt before. At a quick count, I've taken forty-three flights since that scary day. Over that time the sheer terror has mostly worn off. Also, I've adopted routines to help me cope. Before nine-eleven, I occasionally got a little nervous while landing. Since, I'm continuously nervous; but take-off is the worst. So I work a crossword puzzle during the beginning and end of each flight. It's just something to focus on, less passive than merely reading. Returning from Dalat on Tuesday, a thirty-minute hop nevertheless comprising both a takeoff and a landing, I worked a NYT crossword puzzle written by Nick Grivas (and originally published on a Wednesday). The theme was "Southern-style". Hoot Southernisms frequently irritate me, particularly NYT-style, but I actually had to blog about this one. For the clue "More than tipsy, Southern-style" I was expected to write the answer "drunkasacooter".* Is this some Ma and Pa Kettle-type Hollywood Hee-Haw dialog I'm unfamiliar with? Do readers of the New York Times really think we talk this way? I’m as puzzled as a polecat. As revolted as a revenuer. [Cavin]