Keep My Words

I’ve been busy.

Last week I finally booked my flights for New Orleans and Bonnaroo.  As usual, the seat selection process was quite distressing.

Okay, I thought, open seats are blue, unavailable seats are grey.  I want to be close to the front so I can make a speedy exit after landing, but I want to be close to an exit row in case we crash.  Also, I want a window seat because (a) I find it easier to sleep when I can rest my head against the wall, and (b) if violent turbulence causes the overhead compartments to come open, I don’t want someone’s luggage to fall out and knock me unconscious.  Seat 7A is open, and so is seat 14A… But what if the plane crashes and the person in 7A lives but the person in 14A dies?  This choice is clearly a matter of life and death…

I decided to research the safest place to sit on a plane.  Popular Mechanics claims that the back of the airbus is best, while researchers from the University of Greenwich say that a seat up to five rows from an exit offers a better chance of escaping if there’s a fire.  They go on to say that “when seated six or more rows from an exit… the chances of perishing far outweigh those of surviving.”  However, Independent Traveler writes that there’s no clear answer about where you should sit in order to fare best in a plane crash.  They even cite the two previously mentioned studies and discuss how they contradict each other.

Causing further worry was the fact the my mother suggested I fly AirTran, but instead I booked on JetBlue.  What if the JetBlue flight crashes and the AirTran one doesn’t? I internally debated.  As the plane is going down my last thoughts will be that I should have listened to my mom…

Unsure of what to do, I went ahead and checked 7A for my flight out of New York and 14A for my returning flight.

Assuming I survive the flight to New Orleans, this vacation is going to be fantastic.  The day I arrive, we are going tubing on the Bogue Chitto River.  The following day we are driving to Tennessee for Bonnaroo.  After camping there for four days, it’s back to New Orleans to visit with friends and family.

In unrelated news, I picked up my cap and gown the other day.  I arrived at the Graduate Center extremely hungover and late to meet Rona for lunch.

“I’m here to pick up my cap and gown,” I said without removing my sunglasses.  “Last name Walker, first name Ashleigh.”

The woman shuffled through boxes.  I was half expecting her to say there was a problem, like I was actually a few credits shy of graduating or that I failed to fill out some necessary paperwork.  But she didn’t.  She handed me my cap and gown.

“See you next Monday,” she said and smiled.

It hit me.  Holy shit, I’m finally graduating. “Yes, yes you will,” I replied.  “I’m looking forward to it.”

That’s an understatement really.  I’m looking forward to a lot of things…

(Diagram provided by the UK’s Mail Online)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.