I had this fear of flying. A really big fear. When I was a kid, whenever a plane flew overhead, I would duck for cover. You'd think I was being attacked or something. Maybe it was the ominous drone and hum of the engine from above? Who knows.

Another big fear I had was church. Well, not church, but the preacher. My parents dragged me there every Sunday until I was old enough to say no (what they called the "age of accountability"-- go figure), and the preacher scared the puke out of me. I'm not kidding, either. One Sunday I wasn't feeling well but my mom made me get up, get dressed and go along with them anyway. Fast-forward to an hour later when Pastor Faller is spewing fire and brimstone, marching up and down the aisles, admonishing to his wicked, wicked congregation, and my tiny little tummy is starting to tumble. I clench my jaws, I fight back to impending urge rising within me, and just as I'm about to conquer the sensation, Pastor Faller points in my direction and screams, "AND THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB WILL CLEANSE THY WICKED DEEDS, YOUNG MAN, AND SAVE YOU FROM THE ETERNAL FIRES OF H--"

I puked all over his shoes. In hindsight it was a very Exorcist moment, and I'm pretty sure my folks thought I was the most evil, vile thing they'd ever seen. We stopped going to that church about a month after that. I stopped going soon after, too.

So after years of hiding from airplanes and cowering before screaming priests for most of my pre-pubescent life, how typical it was to find myself stranded in the nation's busiest airport and being screamed at by a very pissed off priest.

But let me back up. There's more to this.

Susan and I swapped emails and instant messages back and forth for a few weeks afterward. Once I bought a phone card so I could call her, and we talked until the minutes ran out. At the time I was going through a lot what some might call soul-searching, in that I really didn't know what the hell I wanted to do or where I wanted to go in life. All I knew was that the more I thought about college, the more daunting and less appealing it seemed. In fact, all my life my parents had beaten it into my brain that I would GO TO COLLEGE and GET A DEGREE in something and GET A GOOD JOB and MAKE LOTS OF MONEY. The thing is, for as much pushing as they'd done while I was in high school to get good grades and excel at all those tests, I hadn't the slightest fucking idea what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be. Money sounded great, but I lacked a means to obtain it, and I wasn't keen on pouring all those years in studying some medical field only to realize at the very end that I hated it and didn't want to do it.

To top it off my mom hit a new high (or low, depending on how you look at it) with her bipolar mood swings, and if she wasn't crying, she was bitching, and if it wasn't at me, it was at my father. He took it, though. He wasn't really at home all that much anyway, and whenever he wasn't around, and she was bored of crying or screaming, she'd pull out the handy-dandy credit card and spend some money online. Once, during an argument, she screamed at me and told me to get off my ass and get a job. I fired back with, "So you can spend my money too?"

She smacked me across the face. Knocked my glasses off, too. Then she cried about the fact that she'd struck her own flesh and blood. And then she cried about how she almost broke my glasses. That was the last straw for me. I went online and chatted with Susan until the wee hours of the morning and, by that point, we'd come to a decision: empty my bank account, cash in all those bonds for college, and buy a plane ticket.

"You can live with me," she said. "I've got an apartment. The freelancing pays the bills, but it's never a sure thing. I was thinking about getting a roommate anyway."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "Pack some clothes, your laptop, whatever you can carry in a backpack. Be a nomad, man. Besides, I wouldn't mind seeing you again."

That did it for me. I went the next day, while my parents were at work, and cashed in my bonds. I walked out of the bank with roughly six thousand dollars to my name. I felt like the richest man in the world.

Two days and one lay-over flight later, I'm stuck in an airport about 300 miles from home. Severe weather has grounded all outgoing flights, there are lines of pissed off travelers, and just as the clouds are beginning to break, it's announced that my flight has been canceled. That saying about all hell breaking loose, well, you have no idea how true that is. People screaming, babies crying, and those poor desk clerks having to stand there and take it all with a smile. And then, just as I'm about to pick up a phone and make a collect call, one of the clerks announces that another flight is boarding, and that they have 13 seats available.

I sprinted from the pay phone over to the desk and got in line, only to be accosted by the biggest damn priest I've ever seen. I mean, this guy was huge, he didn't have a neck, and he had a big vein pulsing in his forehead. He looks down at me, opens his mouth, and literally shouts, "There is a LINE here, PUNK." He was something out of my nightmares--huge and Schwarzenegger-like. The Priest 9000, sent from the future to save my fucking soul with a plasma bible, and here's little me, thinking I'm stupid for even leaving home and that all of this is crazy and oh my God I'm going to die at the hands of a pissed off clergyman.

The desk clerk saved my life. She shouted at him, told him I was there first, and that he would have to wait his turn. Then she said she appreciate his patience with the biggest fake smile I've ever seen, and returned to the ticket kiosk.

All in all, it was a pleasant experience.

It's obvious why I left home, why I got on a plane despite my fear and flew over a 1000 miles to meet a girl I'd known for about two hours, total (that's real-life time, mind you). The uncertainty of traveling to be with someone was exciting, maybe even stimulating. I felt like I was embarking upon an adventure and, up until that point, my life was stagnant. I needed to get away. My parents were dragging me down, the possibility of college was dragging me down, and the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to do really wasn't helping things either.

I had no idea what would happen when I set foot on that plane. And the entire time we were in the air, I kept thinking about what might happen, what could happen, and even when we landed and I went through the gate to get my luggage and Susan was standing there with a smile on her face, the reality of it didn't hit me. I still didn't know what to expect. I certainly didn't expect her to wrap her arms around me and kiss me--but she did.

"I missed you, Happy Child."

I smiled at that. For once, I sort of was a Happy Child, and that was okay with me.

That feeling didn't last for very long, but then again, I guess feelings like that never last as long as you want them to. And for the time being, I was happier than I'd ever been. To describe to you what it felt like would mean repeating what's been said a hundred billion times before, in so many different languages and tongues, but I'll say it again for the sake of doing so: it felt like being born. Like a bird hatching in its nest and testing its vocals for the very first time. And if I could give it a sound, it would sound something like this.

~ER