Out The Window
This past April I hit my “Sell By” date––the threshold that romantic comedies, sunscreen-slathered teens on the internet, and ‘30 Under 30’ lists alike told me would be the marker for a woman who is now “old”; that is to say that I turned thirty. For all the good that diverse media representation and feminism have brought me, neither quelled the unrest in my stomach that resonated up to my mind, telling me that my time was up, and even though I didn’t read them or care for them, I would never be on one of those stupid ‘30 Under 30’ lists myself.
When negative emotions like these present themselves, it provides an opportunity to sit with those feelings, learn from them, and perhaps emerge as a stronger person after all is said and done. However, I’ve never been good at sitting still, so I chose the more fun option: To run from my emotions and fly to Japan.
Though it may feel now like everyone is suddenly going to Japan, stretching mere days of travel into weeks of inescapable bite-sized TikToks and Reels, my own trip began long before the deluge started. It was about three and a half years ago when I heard about a friend of a friend who was trying to organize their own large group trip to Japan to celebrate their thirtieth birthday. Although I never have and likely never will meet this person, the envy bubbled up inside of me and lapped my brain, leaving me with the lasting impression that they were my natural rival. I always wanted to go to Japan myself, but the language barrier, the cost of getting there, and the sheer number of days I would need to beg my employer to take off all proved formidable barriers. It’s also worth noting that as someone who was still in their mid-twenties, I simply thought I had more time.
Despite the apparent challenges, I wanted to believe that nothing is truly impossible with enough hard work and careful planning. After all, the essence of the American dream can be simmered down to the idea that those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps will be rewarded. In this case, the reward is getting to fly internationally without the fear of getting fired for taking too much PTO or selling your soul to the church of Capital One. Reflecting on that, I kicked myself for not working harder to be born into a wealthy family. After all, it’s a lot easier to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when the boots are already on your feet, laced up by your parents. It added to my jealousy that not only had my rival overcome these barriers already, but they also had friends and family who were willing to surmount these barriers as well, just to celebrate them. That kind of love is hard for me to wrap my head around. Personally, I find it challenging to will myself to travel to a restaurant downtown in the name of someone else’s birthday, let alone to the other side of the world.
With how much I’ve built up my rival, you may be surprised to learn that they never actually took their trip. This was thanks to Japan’s prolonged response to Covid, continuing to bar foreign entry well after Americans were already back in open floor plan offices, coughing across desks into each other’s unmasked mouths. The thought of my rival’s trip ran so many laps around my mind though, that it burrowed down through my brain, and settled somewhere in the periphery of my consciousness. When my own thirtieth birthday finally became visible on the horizon, and I saw its dust cloud barrel faster and faster toward me, I unearthed the idea and considered its potential merits. Trips need planning: Research, itineraries, contingency plans, etc. The bigger the trip, the more planning it requires, and the more planning it requires, the less time there is to think about other things. With a destination on the other side of the world as a finish line, there couldn’t possibly be any room left for my growing anxieties about my aging body, unaccomplished goals, and inescapable mortality. I needed to make it happen for myself. But first, Japan had to be ready to give the world a chance again.
It took another year of the world chomping at the bit for Japan to finally declare, “Alright, FINE.” The nation begrudgingly started to let tourists in––so long as they were the kind of tourists who could shell out thousands of dollars for official tour packages, marked up 100% for the curated experience of never having to suffer through a conversation with someone who doesn't speak your language.
At the time, I found the requirement to book a pre-planned tour package ridiculous. It more or less placed an income requirement on entering the country, which went against my beliefs as someone who once made a $10 donation to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. It also went against my tax bracket, a reminder that nearing thirty, I had not achieved as much in my career as I thought I would by that point. However, knowing what I do now as someone slightly older and hardly wiser, Japan was really on to something keeping the guest list small to start. Your worldview rapidly evolves once you find yourself fighting against strangers who are walking backward through crowds and holding GoPros overhead, or tripping over $1,000 cameras that were set up on tripods in the middle of narrow public walkways.
Covid, combined with the prolonged border closure, created a backlog of demand to travel to Japan. What’s worse, that demand became amplified and mutated by the modern world’s addiction to creating and consuming “content,” a word I hate, because to me it’s the equivalent of telling someone you like to eat “food.” However, before my trip, I was one of those bit-chompers watching what was likely the equivalent of hours of videos, under one minute each, telling me all the things one had to experience in Japan.
By the time Japan announced that they needed all the cash they could get, and decided that even we broke bitches could come in too, it had been two years since I originally heard about my rival’s trip. Enough time had passed at that point that no one could effectively argue I stole their idea. So, I stole their idea and booked a flight to Japan.
By now, the dust cloud signaling the approach of my thirtieth birthday was whirling faster and more menacingly toward me. But, in the moments immediately after I hit “Book,” I suddenly found myself eager for it to arrive.
***
There’s something animal about the way air travel captivates my mind; Not the concept of it per se. I don’t fill my time watching documentaries or building scale models of airplanes. Hardly a day goes by where I don’t see an airplane flying above my head, and I’ve yet to fall to my knees in amazement and wonder as it passes by. But, when my alarm goes off at 4 A.M. on a Thursday (the cats too groggy to scream for their vaguely fish-scented kibble, and not a soul on the road besides long-haul truckers and career bartenders finally heading home), I suddenly become aware of an uneasiness in my stomach, and the surface of my skin starts to tingle, on the precipice of goosebumps. If humans never developed civilizations and drive-thrus, this reaction likely would have been reserved for twigs snapping in the night, or rustling in the grass ahead––signs that something to hunt or be hunted by was near. However, nowadays we humans lead a pampered life, our inner workings still trying to figure out what to do with the leftover instincts that couldn’t be crammed in a Tupperware and stored in the freezer.
It’s likely that I’m just the right amount of stupid to be excited by a major mode of global transportation. On one end of the scale, it’s frightening to encounter things you don’t understand. 800,000 pounds of metal and writhing human bodies hurtling through the air, miraculously dodging the 40,000 or so other flights happening in the United States each day should not be possible. At least, not without the power of magic. What’s worse, people on this end are more likely to conflate magic with evil witchcraft, making the whole thing even more frightening. When you think of it like this, it makes sense why some people start to panic and opt to be sedated as they watch the airplane door close; mind you, not with a vault-like locking mechanism pulled to by some body-builder, but with a flimsy-looking lever that might as well be a parking brake, pulled to by a 5-foot-nothing flight attendant in heels.
On the other end of the scale, I’m sure the brainiacs of the world have grown weary of explaining how basic engineering concepts demonstrate how air travel is not only possible, but arguably “safe.” To be clear: Explaining it isn’t the tiring part in and of itself. It’s explaining it in a way just so, as to allow our smaller brains to comprehend and believe it. How can airplanes fly? Because science says they can. I accept that because someone smarter than me knows it.
Sure, I could furiously demand that they prove it to me, but the experience would likely leave me more embarrassed than enlightened, much like when I dabbled in cardio dance fitness classes. I wheezed through class, thinking we were all nearly in perfect sync, until my astigmatism-afflicted eyes focused, and I saw in the reflection of the wall-to-wall mirrors that there was a sole struggler, me, sweating profusely and out of step. I’m sure that I could personally shadow the entire evolution of the airplane, in some ghost-like journey a la A Christmas Carol, and while I would believe it, I likely still wouldn’t “get” it. At some point, I’d have dozed off or asked them for their Wifi password so I could check Instagram. Then, they’d say, “What’s Wifi?” And I’d realize I don’t really know, and could not explain it if I tried.
Though aerospace engineering does not fall into this category for me, I do understand the general concept of having some piece of knowledge so fundamentally ingrained that it makes it impossible to remember life before knowing it. Although I ultimately squandered all of my potential away, I did spend a good many years studying music and its theory, thinking it was my calling. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the “calling” I felt was really the fear of walking away from the ‘sunk cost.’ A sunk cost of years of band classes, private lessons, extracurricular drumlines, and a Bachelor's degree in music. That’s something I’ll probably deal with in therapy later in life, but for now, I choose not to think about it. A recurring theme.
While I didn’t retain my finer skills and knowledge, I have retained enough to spoil some of the “magic” of music. It’s similar to how Google spoiled the magic of the bar argument. One day, as I’m sure many will remember, we were all debating whether a landmass in a body of water connected to the mainland by a bridge was technically considered an island or a peninsula. Then the next, we weren’t. Google can settle that one pretty quickly.
All that to say, I don’t need to speculate about why a song sounds happy, or sad, or perfect for waltz. I already know it’s in a major key, or a minor key, or written in 3/4 time. And for other people, they already know how planes fly.
***
For any given trip, the most intoxicating part is while I’m walking through the airport. “Man, these people are going places,” I’ve always thought to myself. I went so far as to express that sentiment to my mother once, only to have her chuckle and reply, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what everyone is doing here.” Though she agreed with me, her tone let me know she didn’t really get what I was trying to say. Yes, everyone there was obviously going somewhere else. But, isn’t that enough to be exciting? I would be hurt by her apparent dismissal, except that it was completely reasonable. After all, this was when I was a child, and she, a full-grown adult.
Back when I flew in my youth (too young to use the internet for anything other than flash games and pirated anime videos), everything down to the way our seats were assigned bewildered me. Naturally, this was because (again, being a child) my mom was the one buying the tickets; I was not usually consulted in the process. A side effect of this (though I had no idea she was to blame at the time) was that no matter where I flew from or where I flew to, no matter what time of day or time of year it was, no matter how much my mom did or did not complain about the price of the ticket, my seat was on the wing.
On its own, it doesn’t sound that groundbreaking. Still, I implore you to join me on a mental exercise and transport yourself back to the headspace of a child. You (again, a child) still believe in an overweight, immortal man flying around the world to deliver presents to every single kid in the world as a seasonal hobby. Suddenly, on a rare occasion, you have been granted the gift of flight. This is the top. You have no idea if you’ll get this chance again. It’s worth noting that this exercise works best for kids who grew up lower middle class or below. Any richer, and I’m sure the magic was spoiled early on by getting anything you ever asked for.
After all the time spent packing, driving to the airport, and panicking in security while untying your sneakers to cumbersomely strip them from your extra-wide feet that you crammed into regular-width shoes, you’re finally ready to board the experience of a lifetime. You’ve got a ticket for flight and you’re not old enough to be scared about what happens if the door flies off or a drunk passenger threatens to punch a flight attendant for not letting them pay cash for a bloody mary at 8 A.M.
You finally scoot down your aisle to the window seat your mother blessed you with. Conjectures about what the Earth must look like at 10,000 feet race through your head. Your sticky kid fingers (it’s impossible to know why they’re sticky, they just were) grip the minuscule lip of the window shade and work it up, revealing none other than… The full wing of the plane.
At this point in the exercise, I’d like to ask you how viscerally you reacted to that letdown. I can only imagine that you felt a dull sinking sensation inside like a used car dealership’s dancing inflatable man crumpling in on himself as everything gets turned off for the night.
I was devastated. What awful luck could I have had? Or worse, was this karma for some unkind deed I did to another? I wasn’t an evil kid, of course not, but I was known to take a joke too far from time to time. The first time I sat on the wing, I was disappointed. The second time, it was funny. After the third time, I found myself on the verge of setting up an anonymous Facebook group to spread the word about this new conspiracy I had discovered, where airlines personally targeted me to bar me from having fun on an airplane.
Fortunately, I never acted on my deranged theories and instead buried them deep inside like I did most of my other thoughts and feelings. Before they had a chance to ferment and explode from a gaseous buildup, I learned from my mom that she was, in fact, the sole conspirator intentionally placing me on the wing. As you can imagine, this rocked my world. For a long time I truly thought I was on a list. Not a serious list––one where I would need to have my bags “randomly” searched at each airport I traveled through––but a list nonetheless. A list that kept me tethered to the plane and prevented me from being able to see the world spread out beneath me, thousands of feet below. I imagined the list to be thoughtfully comprised of individuals who had said or done something, in the view of some watchful eye, that warranted them to be “messed with” without tangibly being inconvenienced; something like swiping one too many freezer-burned ice cream sandwiches from your grandmother’s freezer when you thought she wasn’t looking, or testing the waters of saying “crap” to your parents, not anticipating how negatively they’d react.
While it was torture to me, to my mom, the wing was the safest place for a child to be in case the plane went down. When this was finally revealed to me, I accepted it as truth, and thanked my mom for taking care of me in a way I never would have taken care of myself. It’s something I carried with me for a long time: The love of a mother willing to make the hard choice to deprive them of a plane window view in exchange for their safety. However, I’ve since researched it more and discovered that it isn’t even true. There are many places on a plane that are up for debate as the safest place to be in a plane crash, but on the wing is not one of them. As a Grade-A certified hater, this is a huge win for me, because I get to say that someone else was wrong, and it actually impacted me (if only superficially), which most haters cannot say for the subjects of their disapproval.
As I got older–over the age of 18 but still under the age of 22, to be exact–my mom still occasionally bought me flights, but she stopped exclusively putting me on the wing. I never asked her why though. Maybe she learned the truth about the wing and its safety rating. Or, maybe she found a cheaper place to stick her kids when shuttling them through the air; safety be damned. If I was not on the dreaded wing, I found myself routinely placed in the emergency exit row of the airplane. For most flights, the emergency exit row is only a contingency plan, meaning that virtually anyone could fill those seats and it wouldn’t make a difference. But, having this contingency plan means that situations can and will arise where those in the emergency exit seats will need to spring into action to help guide passengers to safety, putting their own lives on the line to do so.
So, there I was, an 18-year-old, 5’4” female without a workout routine to speak of, who likely had (and still has) some kind of neurodivergent situation that was never addressed, taking on the responsibility of assisting a plane full of strangers through a life-threatening emergency. I often wonder about the pro/con list that ran through my mom’s head as she selected flights for her children. ”Well, she’s been complaining that she can’t see out the window. Let me see if I can find another option––Oh! Extra legroom… same price… must lay your life on the line without training in the event of a freak accident… Sold!” I am fortunate that there never was an emergency because––between you and me, and this can’t leave this room––I had absolutely no confidence that I could perform the duties they were asking of me. Sure, I looked the flight attendant in the eyes and said “yes” when they asked me if I could, but here’s the thing, I was lying. You may judge me, but I don’t regret it; the extra legroom really was nice.
***
If there’s an emergency exit row on international flights, I wouldn’t know. There must be, and I assume there are even several for planes large enough to cross oceans, but chances are they charge a premium in exchange for marginally more legroom should you need it in a daring life-saving stunt. I was never gifted with corporate career ambition, and haven’t made it that far up the ladder, so even an economy ticket to Japan stretched my budget about as far as my credit card would allow. I didn’t even check the pricing for seats not included in the lowest price listed on Google Flights. It would only hurt my pride.
So, days away from my thirtieth birthday, far removed from the guiding hand of my mother and the choices she would make for me, I was left to my own devices to choose the seat that would become my living room, dining room, and bedroom for the 13-hour flight to Tokyo. The flight was changed often, likely following cackling from Air Canada before they sent out the notifications, and each time it left me scrambling to select new seats, like a game of digital musical chairs. After the final flight change, I did not pay extra for an emergency exit row of course, and according to the diagram on SeatGuru, even the wing seats were long since taken by the time I logged in. So, with the options I had left, I sat toward the back of the plane, my body confined to a perimeter of imaginary walls that couldn’t have been larger than a coffin. My only respite was the narrow space above my backpack, wedged under the seat in front of me, which provided a space to prop up my extra-wide feet crammed into regular-width compression socks.
Approaching your third decade in life while corralled to the back of the plane can make you feel like some of the choices you made in life were not the right ones, especially as your sister flies to Europe in Premium Economy only months later, signaling a stark difference in your tax brackets. But, even from my vantage point all the way back in seat 39B, after nearly 13 hours traveling across the world, I was excited to open my window for the chance to watch as Tokyo, and the whole of Japan, rolled out beneath me. What greeted me was a cloudy sky, huge ocean bays, and a gigantic, international-sized tip of a plane wing, obstructing half my view.