transport: aeroplanes

I used to believe the U.S.A. was literally over Mexico above our heads since everytime we flew up to visit Grandma the plane would fly into the sky and then we'd arrive in the USA. I guess looking at maps didn't help much either since that's the way it looks on there too.

I used to believe that all planes were really just wind up toys that were thrown from place to place, and that all the passengers went through a tunnel to get shrunk to fit inside and were always just wound up and thrown like a toy to their destination.

When I was little, my dad used to travel a lot for work. More often than not, his flights home would return after I was in bed, and when he got home he would come upstairs to give me and my sister kisses and let us know he was home. For the longest time, I though the airplane dropped him off in front of our house. I used to try and stay awake to see the plane land on our street, but I always fell asleep.

I used to think that at some point during every plane flight, the plane would crash, but people only died if they didn't successfully land in clouds. Cirrus clouds were adequate, but the best cloud to land in would be a cumulus. Halfway through my first plane flight, I got really nervous because there were no clouds, and my mom asked me what was wrong. She laughed and explained. I was six.

I used to think that the wings of aeroplanes were retractable and folded in when the plane wasn't flying. I therefore once said to somebody 'It's wings are out' and they must have wondered what I meant.

My Brother in law travels often for work, my nephew knew he left on an airplane and that he returned on an airplane. What he missed is that he ever got off and airplane. He thought when his dad went on a trip in an airplane he just flew around for the week and landed when he got home.

When I was younger, I used think that whenever I traveled out of the country in an airplane, the place I was going to was in the sky.

When I first traveled in an airplane at about five years, it seemed to take forever to take off once we had taxied to the runway. I was sure the long wait was because the pilot had to wind up the rubber bands that would run the propellers much like the toy wooden planes we would put together. . Thinking that made me more patient. After all, I didn't want the rubber band to be played out before we were back on the ground.

For most of my early years I believed I was dropped from a plane by gypsies because my parents told me so. One day, I must have been about 7 I happened to look up at a passing plane when it hit me. What were gypsies doing in planes? This was my justification for questioning my parents about this. Apparently they had forgotten they had told me this and burst out laughing that I still believed something they had told me so long ago.

I used to believe that when we would fly somewhere there was a separate plane for our luggage. A smaller plane that would fly behind the people plane. Then, it explained why the luggage would take soooo long and why it would get lost sometimes.

I used to go to the airport and watch the planes take off and land with my father. I asked why the planes always had red flashing lights on top of them when they were taking off. He told me those were the airplanes that checked your speed from the air like the signs would say on the highways and the flashing red light meant they going after someone they caught speeding.

From when I was 9 years old my parents would send me to my grandparents home each summer. When I flew on the airplanes, I used to believe that there were miniature cities near airports with exact replicas of everything – houses, cars, people, stoplights, churches. I used to love to look out the window when I flew on planes so I could see the miniature cities. When I didn’t see them, I was so disappointed and thought some airports didn’t have them for some reason. It took several years until I realized that what I was seeing was actually the difference of perspective when you were up in the air far from the ground.

Both my brother and I (ages 4 and 5 at the time) were very disappointed when we landed in Florida at Disney World. Our parents asked what was wrong and we told them we thought Disney was in the clouds. Due to the fact that you had to take a plane to get there and all the Disney logos had the castle on clouds.

When I was little I used to beleive that whenever someone went to the toilet in an aeroplane, the flight attendants would push a button that opened where the poo went and it would go down onto earth.

When I was little, someone told me that you could tell when a plane was about to crash because the engine would grow louder and louder as the plane lost altitude. So whenever I would hear a low flying plane, I would race outside expecting to hear an explosion or see the plane hurtling to the ground nearby. To my relief, that never happened.

I used to believe that aeroplanes didn't move horizontally once airborne. They flew up and then waited for the Earth to turn around beneath them.