Under Control

Traveling is best in the early morning hours, when people don't quite have the required amount of energy to be a dickhead to you. I swear, I even saw the TSA guys smiling at travelers.

Even though I love to travel, I don't necessarily enjoy being away from home because of the feeling of reduced control over things which revolve around your life, or vice versa. Even though I usually have very little control, now I have zero. The mental block is significant, and there are lingering aftereffects. It's like stepping off of one of those totally awesome moving sidewalks. That's why I like coaching soccer. If something is going wrong on the pitch, at least I have the power to change it.

I am not a control freak, but I don't like the idea of other people writing my story. Consider the amount of blind trust we put into strangers, let alone our friends; we drive around just hoping that people won't cross those lines at the wrong time, we put things into our bodies that complete strangers have deemed healthy, and we rely on our own bodies to not, for whatever reason, mix our chemicals into the wrong vials. We line up and walk onto huge flying bullets without having the faintest understanding as to the physics of flight and the perspicacity of the crew. We are taught to accept our good fortune and not question who or what is responsible. Of course, it'd be stupid not to.

Ignorance is... bliss?

Then what's objective reality? Chopped liver?

Frig!

And sometimes, I choose to give up control, like when I chose to book my flight with a ten-hour layover in Chicago. What was I thinking?

One more thing real quick: we were just alerted that the first class passengers on the Chicago flight get to walk up to the plane on a red carpet. I'm not kidding.

The rest of us have to use the black one.

TJH