What’s the Only Thing Worse Than a Fear of Flying? Having Something in Common With John Madden.

Jean Hannah Edelstein managed to make me laugh and feel her pain in this essay about her flying phobia.

I think about how after the plane crashes, my family and I will be featured in a special issue of People magazine about the tragedy, and other people waiting at airports will sit at airport gates, waiting for delayed flights, biting their nails, and reading about how we all died in the tiny plane’s flaming wreckage. And they will think: How sad.

This is, in fact, a special technique I have developed over most of my life to prevent the plane from crashing: If I think enough about the crash, if I am sufficiently scared, then it won’t crash and I’ll feel sheepish, because the opposite of what I anticipate always comes true. If I don’t do this—if for just one minute I think, “Hey, this is OK. What a nice view, and a tasty small bag of cheese-flavored pretzels,” then that singular happy thought will make the plane disintegrate in mid-air like the balsawood gliders my brother and I used to chuck out of our bedroom windows. So when we at last are boarding the plane, hours delayed, I am thinking more about the special issue of People and what kind of coverage we will get, and assessing the other passengers at our gate. That man is handsome, so he will get some extra column inches, perhaps even an inset box with a color photo and some details about his work with underprivileged children. That lady is scowling and has really unfortunate hair. I think they will print her black-and-white memorial headshot extra small.

©2026 World Hum, All Rights Reserved