How Was Your Flight?

When people ask, "How was your flight?" I used to always answer, "Good." My assessment of the flight took into account only one thing: Did the plane crash? If the answer was no, then I'd classify the flight as, "good." Eventually, I got over my anxiety about planes crashing, and I began finding things that bothered me beyond the looming possibility that my plane could fall out of the sky at any moment. My friend Beth, who has a very deep well of sympathy and a knack for finding redeeming qualities in humans, once said her flight was terrible because of a guy she was sitting next to. I'm not sure that they spoke at all, but Beth is scared of spiders and the man seated next to hear had a big tattoo of a tarantula on his neck. A few of my recent flight have even been so bad with crying kids, loud talkers, and spilled drinks in my lap, that I've come to think that the plane crashing wouldn't actually be that bad.