Pat McDonald
5/20/10
Memoir
Sullivan
I was all set, ready for takeoff when I realized how afraid I was to be going all this way with nobody I knew. It was new to me at first, I was excited to see my relatives that I hadn’t seen in a while but then I thought of my parents, who were standing at the window waiting for the plane to leave the terminal, and I got sad and scared. Even though I was only going to be gone for a few days I was still going to miss them. Before everyone was allowed to board the plane the pilot and copilot brought my parents and me on the plane to get me comfortable with it and let me sit in the pilot’s seat, which I thought was the coolest thing ever, and gave me, and my parents, a tour of the plane. They also told me that I was going to be the only person sitting in first class on that flight. This made me very excited because I assimilated it with me being famous and I was the only one allowed to sit in first class. However untrue this may be it still didn’t matter to me I was one of a kind on that flight. Also, when the pilot was about to give the talk that all pilot’s give about the safety equipment that was aboard the plane he opened the first class door and asked if I wanted to give the speech and I of course being the 12 year old that I was of course wanted to give the speech. He introduced me over the intercom and then it was all me; there are these little pieces of paper that the pilots have that have the whole spiel on all the safety devices and what to do in case of an emergency on the airplane. When the plane was pulling out of the terminal all I could see were my parents at those big picture windows watching me ride off on an airplane all by myself. The lasting image that is engraved in my head is my mother turning away from the window to start crying because of the fact that her “little boy” was growing up and that’s a mother’s worst nightmare is to have her little boy be not so little anymore. As the plane got down to the runway I became more anxious and I started to get more and
more afraid of the plane because all I could think about was September 11th and how all those people were just like me and they didn’t deserve to die they didn’t do anything wrong they were just trying to go see relatives or go on a business trip and I started to pray. I prayed for this plane to not have any of those people that were on those planes in 2001 and that I would make it safely to Detroit, where my layover was, and then safely to Dallas where my cousin was going to be picking me up from the airport. During the plane ride to Detroit I was asked by the pilot if I wanted to join them in the cockpit to see what flying a plane looks like from “the captain’s chair” as he called it. I did want to so very bad so we went in and he sat me down in the chair and then the best thing about the whole experience came just then with the asking of a simple question… “Would you like to fly it?” Now what 12 year old that is asked whether he wants to fly a real plane is going to say no? I know I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity like this so he first showed me exactly what to do and then he said very faithfully “you can do this, it’s like driving a car.” At first I was extremely nervous and was afraid that I was going to send us into a downward spiral never to make it to Detroit or back to my parents ever again. It is surprisingly easy to fly a plane at 30,000 feet and I flew it for only about a minute but in that minute I was so focused because I knew that all those people were depending on me to fly them safely over the great lakes, which is where we were flying over at the time. After I was done flying the plane I went back to my seat and decided to take a nap the rest of the way to Detroit. Once the plane landed in Detroit I had no time and the flight attendant asked me if I knew where I was going which I now think is a stupid question to ask a 12 year old who is by himself in an airport as big as O’Hare International. She was a nice lady though and she brought me to my next plane which was boarding right when our plane was landing so I didn’t get nearly the same tour that I got the first time but again I was the only one that got to sit in first class which made me very happy. This plane ride was much longer because we were going from Detroit to Dallas and most of the ride I slept except
for the time that I was allowed again to go into the pilot’s chair and see where the plane was going and the different perspective that the pilot’s and passengers have. The first thing I remember about arriving in Dallas is the heat, it set a record for both days that I was down there it was 128 degrees on the Friday that I got there and then on Saturday it was even hotter at 134 degrees. My cousin’s pool was at 92 degrees and it did nothing to cool you off. My time there was short lived unfortunately and before I knew it I was on a plane flying back to O’Hare. When I was down there though, we did go to a baseball game that was between the Texas Rangers and the New York Yankees. The Yankees ended up winning the game, and I got autographs after the game by many of the Yankees such as: Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Bernie Williams, who was in his last few years as a Yankee, to name few. The rest of the time I was there was spent on going to the movies and going to the racetrack to go on the go-carts which I wasn’t supposed to drive by myself and my cousin paid the guy 20 extra dollars so that I could drive my own car. But before I knew it the weekend was over and it was 5 a.m. Monday morning and I was getting up to go to the airport with my cousin to fly back home. The plane rides home were uneventful and I didn’t get to sit in the pilot’s chair on either flight and yet I was still the only allowed to travel in first class which still managed to make me feel like a celebrity. The only thing that was remotely cool about the flight home is that I got to eat whatever I wanted them to make me for breakfast, which as a 12 year old kid I thought was pretty cool. The plane rides seemed to go quicker on the way home and before I knew it I was landing in Albany to the delight of my parents (mostly my mother). When I got off the plane I was more than ecstatic to see my parents and I couldn’t tell them fast enough about all the things that went on and how I got to fly a plane and went to the baseball game and got to sit in first class all by myself. This experience was one of the most fun-filled and exciting trips I have ever been on and I have been many places in the world like France and Europe and this one still
tops them all because of how much I appreciated it because of how young and naïve I was and how everything was so new to me because it was just me all by myself being an independent child and not have anything go wrong that would have ruined my experience. If I ever had the chance to do it again I wouldn’t because it could never live up to the first time that I travelled by myself halfway across the country.