Fear of Flying: Irrational, but I'm Not Alone.

If I had flown home today I would have made it alive, and I find solace in this thought, somehow. In fact if I had left on a plane any day this month I would have made it alive, but what if I leave tomorrow? Or the next day? Or how about if I leave on Tuesday March 12th?

The truth is for days now I have been suffering the kind of anxiety that makes you drop three pounds in two days, that makes it so you can't eat, you're nauseous all the time, and can't sleep at nights. I even considered a 3-day Greyhound bus ride to the 5-hour flight on JetBlue.

The thing about a 5-hour flight is that I'll be alone. My husband won't be traveling with me. I'll hear every noise, I can't listen to head phones cause I need to hear what's going on...I need to hear and know what's going on in case I have to freak out and let everyone else know they should freak out too.

My palms get sweaty, I've been known to drench the cuffs of my shirts or sweaters with palm sweat. It's awful.

Indiana Jones' plane about to crash - so maybe the plane we

took home from NYC was more than a single-engine plane,

but there were a lot of propellors

And the plane crashes into the mountain, Indie and his posse

make it out safely via an inflatable raft.

The last time I flew, Ryan and I were coming back from NYC to Portland, Maine.

Perhaps this was an hour flight, maybe a little longer, but not much longer.

We flew home on a plane that looked like the one Indiana Jones had jumped out of before it crashed into the mountain-side in Temple of Doom.


No exaggeration!!! The only thing missing were the chickens running around the inside of the plane.

One time I tried to listen to my iPod flying on a connecting flight home from Washington DC (home at the time was again Portland, ME).

A woman who also disliked flying told me she listened to music and it helped her.

(Now excuse my language, but...) I shit you NOT the first song that came out was "Donna" by Ritchie Valens. Thoroughly creeped out I skipped to the next song and it turned up Buddy Holly!!!! I put the iPod away in a hurry, and prayed to the heavens I would make it home and that the iPod experience wasn't some morbid omen.

And I'd like to say it may have been my fifth-grade obsession with the movie La Bamba that has caused a great deal of my aerophobia.

The movie focuses on the short life of Ritchie Valens, and puts a strong emphasis on his fear of flying.

Apparently Valens' fear of flying occurred after a freak accident on January 31, 1957 when a Continental Airline jet on a test flight had a mid-air collision with an Air Force fighter jet. This collision happened near, or over the Pacoima Junior High School where Valens attended.

According to sources, Valens was not at school that day because he was attending his grandfather's funeral. In the movie La Bamba this situation has been dramatized indicating that Valens' good friend was killed by the falling debris of the crash as he played basketball in the schoolyard.

I used to tell kids Ritchie Valens was

my boyfriend! Then I realized Lou

Diamond Philips was an actor who played

other roles in the movies - and then he

lost his appeal.

However, I haven't found any written proof that Valens was friends with any of the schoolyard victims (there were three). In fact, Valens was much older than the children killed in this unfortunate accident.

What I learned as a fifth-grader who'd watched La Bamba so many times, that to this day I can still recite the movie to people, was that flying is dangerous, and if you fear flying you'll die in a plane crash!

So I think I still secretly carry these childhood fears with me.

Needless to say I will be flying out of LAX on Tuesday March 12th, heavily medicated and hopefully sleeping a majority of the way there.

And because I live in Hollywood and many-a-celebrity has to fly, and fly safely, I thought I'd research which celebrities are afraid to fly, and here's what I came up with -

Transformers star Megan Fox is admittedly afraid of flying, so much so that she actually developed a sort of superstitious (kinda OCD) ritual where she listens to Britney Spears' music because she is certain she will not die while listening to Spears' music.

"I know for a fact it's not in my destiny to die listening to a Britney Spears album, so I always put that on in my headphones when I'm flying because I know it won't crash if I've got Britney on," Fox has been quoted saying.


I'm with Billy Bob Thornton when he said he wasn't afraid of flying, but afraid of crashing. Although, since having admitted to his fear of crashing, Thornton has claimed to have overcome his fear following the 9/11 attacks. He claims that as people have become more worried about flying, he has lost his fear.

After engine trouble on a chartered flight in 1990, Cher developed a healthy fear of flying. In fact, she ditched the plane and rescheduled a Novia Scotia concert so she could travel to Boston by train, then to Halifax, Canada by bus.

Other notable celebrities who are afraid to fly include -Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Anniston, Ben Affleck, Tori Spelling, Aretha Franklin, Britney Spears, Colin Farrell, Jay Leno, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Justin Bieber, and David Bowie.

Kate Winslet and her then husband Sam Mendes were known to fly separately because they were afraid to die together, leaving their children parent-less.

Thankfully I don't have to travel as often as celebrities do, and I do kiss the sweet ground I walk on when I do land safely. I don't have any secret tricks for getting over my irrational fear. I do, however, do things like read into things obsessively as if they were omens. For example, our dog gets too cuddly with me and I think she must foresee my demise, but then I realize that's ridiculous.

I can do this!!! So on Tuesday morning I will strap on my big girl pants and get on that plane, and ride like a civil passenger, unafraid because I'll be so drugged out!