NEW YORK, NY: Planes, Trains, and Anti-Anxiety Medication (12/28/09)

Each birthday as a child, my father gave me a new volume in the "Worst Case Scenario" guides. This was his way of calming my panic attacks during travel. I've learned how to stop a speeding train, how to escape from quicksand, and how to ward off a zombie attack. I've studied the books, and have followed their travel instructions to a tee. However, his intentions backfired; in preparing for every eventuality, I have learned the vivid details of everything that could go wrong...

I am a terrible traveler. I love being other places, but the process of actually getting there makes me nervous. I will check to see if I have my passport at least twelve times, and will then check twelve times more to make sure that my passport didn't fall out when I was checking. I will then move my passport to another area in case some thief saw where I checked to find my passport. This continues until my passport has made a merry-go-round of my person. In my pre-teen years I would spend entire flights with my fingers crossed. On a recent flight from San Francisco I had to sedate myself because the man next to me refused to turn off his cell-phone. I've never been stopped at airport security for the same reason that Woody Allen has probably never been stopped. If you need a valium to just make it through airport security, you have bigger issues than ascertaining that all your 3 oz. liquids are in a sealed plastic bag, no larger than a one gallon size.

I can spend a whole vacation just recovering from a flight (reference the Kiwi turbulence debacle of 1995). But I can't stop traveling. No matter how neurotic, superstitious, or physically ill it makes me, I want to see how small the world is and drink up every drop, play every game, and dance to every tune. There has got to be an easier way to travel, aside from ocean liners (no go since the Titanic) and magic carpets (I won't ride in anything without seatbelts).

And now there has been a truly scary situation in Detroit, which, to my endless gratitude, ended peacefully. But now I've got a bone to pick with this Nigerian jerk, with jihad, and with Homeland Security. There is never a good time for this sort of thing, but it would have been more convenient if this had not happened when I was fresh out of anti-anxieties, and my flask exceeds the liquid ounce limit prescribed by the TSA.