The bird's eye view.

I don't like to fly.

Because I don't like doing it, I avoid it altogether unless my boss absolutely orders me to. And when she does, I always make sure we fly together. That way, I know she's getting her money's worth.

I believe I've hinted here before that I am what's termed an anxious flyer. If it were up to me, I would never even think about it, let alone do it. I don't even really like to talk about it. Yet, flying--and my dread of having to do it--seems to come up in a lot of my everyday conversations.

Unfortunately, it's almost always never enough to simply say "I don't like to fly" and be done with it. The person on the other end of the conversation always wants to know why I don't like to fly. If my list of reasons (which is fairly long) does not strike them as reasonable (and it usually doesn't), they set out to give me the talking cure.

Listening to these people, I get the exact same feeling I used to get on the playground, watching from the sidelines as all the other girls were doing handsprings--or somersaults as we called them then.

"Oh, pshaw! It's easy. See me? I can do it!"

You know what happens when you listen to girls who are born knowing how to go from standing position to handstand to back again? You walk home with a mouth full of fescue and the indelible mental image of you flying ass-over-teakettle--and not in a somersault-y way.

photo, Onofre Bouvila, via wikipedia.