The night before I was supposed to leave for my first trip to England, the film United 93 which was based on events that happened on September the Eleventh came out on DVD. I’d heard that it was very well done so I went right to the video store after confirming my own flight and rented that particular one and the plane crash classic Alive.

They had a two for one deal on and I figured I’d take advantage of said discount and make it a crash themed evening.

It was a morbid theme admittedly, but I’ve never been one to pass up any sort of movie related bargain so I went ahead with the plan.

This turned out to be folly on my part.

Both movies were great. There’s no denying that, but there’s also no denying how much shit was literally scared out of my anus when it came time to board a jumbo jet less than twenty four hours later.

I suppose it could have had something to do with the fact that I was going to a foreign country alone for the first time, but with the amount of explosions that littered my thoughts as I was in the line to board, I’d say that it’s pretty clear where all the sweat in my palms was coming from.

I tried to convince myself that once I was on the plane and settled into my seat things would look better.

How wrong I was.

The movie that frightened me the most was “United 93”.The one where Muslim extremists take over an airplane and kill all the passengers.

Now, I’m normally progressive enough not to equate all Muslims with bloodthirsty radicals, but with a head full of blown up airplanes and tragedy, I guess you could say my mind wasn’t exactly operating to its tolerant potential.

I was in my seat at the rear of the plane trying to wrap my brain around the whole 9 hour flight concept when I saw him.

Thanks to twenty four hour a day seven day a week coverage of them on CNN, I was able to identify the subject of my open mouthed terrified gaze as a Muslim with some ease.

He wasn’t wearing second hand army fatigues or burning an effigy of George W. Bush but I could tell.

I crossed my fingers and prayed to various God’s that he wouldn’t sit next to me, because the one sitting next to them always snuffs it first, but like so many of my request’s for snow day’s when I was a kid, my prayer was formally rejected by the all mighty and his cronies.

The man sat down and warmly introduced himself.

I was still suspicious, but slightly less so.

We took off on schedule and as there was nothing else going on, I began to watch him fiddle around with his black berry, preparing my self for the inevitable explosion each time he punched anything in on the keyboard.

I thought my head was going to burst from all the pent up anxiety when the man finally finished up what was obviously in retrospect an email and introduced himself.

He turned out to be an editor at Pakistan’s largest English language newspaper returning home after helping his daughter settle in to her dorm at the University of Toronto and was actually a pretty great guy to talk to.

He had lived all over the world at different times in his life and he gave me a lot of advice regarding things to do and places to see once I arrived in England.

Things were looking up for me, flight wise that is. It had been 3 hours and we hadn’t exploded, I’d had about 7 complimentary Ginger Ales, and they’d just shown a hilarious episode of Fraser on the cabin TV’s in which the character Fraser and his brother Niles spent the entire episode discussing the placement of a green chair in the former’s blue apartment.

And then my neighbor went to sleep.

Through a nasty combination of him taking up the vast majority of the leg room and my own inability to sleep while sitting up, my sweaty palms returned and I grew increasingly agitated as the night wore on.

If I’d been born with any sort of spine running up my backside I’d have gotten him to shift over a bit so that I could lower my knees down from underneath my chin, but my inner small town Canadian got the best of me and I was left to uncomfortably stew in my own juices for the remainder of the flight.

I realized once we landed though that the important thing was that there was a remainder of the flight.

Sure, I’d developed a new prejudice against inconsiderate Pakistani Newspaper editors, and my own self loathing had reached a new height thanks to my inaction during about five hours of discomfort, but the very fact that I wasn’t exploded somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean got rid of all the bad vibes.

Of course they all came back once I entered the airport, but the important thing was that I was alive and planning an elaborate scheme to burn every copy of the United 93 DVD I could get my sweaty little hands on.