Ira Takes a Plane

A story about starting over

As he packed his suitcase, one of three, Ira thought about what his new life might be like, once his things were settled in, he alongside them.

He’d never taken a plane ride before, and he was nervous, so nervous, yet thrilled at the chance to see the world below him, as grids and squares and green blobs, one by one. He imagined visiting each of those cities and farms and fields one day, after he’d had the chance to see them from up high. After he’d had the chance to see that they really existed.

In fact, Ira had never left his hometown, population 32,041, and was using the promise of a new job to start over. He’d scoured listing upon listing for the chance to move ahead, but he’d spent the last eleven years as a secretary, not even under the more forgiving executive assistant title, and over these years, his skills had remained frozen. Stumped as to how to move ahead, he had answered an ad seeking a clerk in a lamp shop, a job requiring no previous experience, in a big city, population 801,246. He would begin as a lamp salesman, sure, but he’d have a chance to build a new life once he’d sorted his whereabouts. Ira had chosen this city because it was nearly a thousand miles from home.

The belongings that didn’t fit today would be left behind in his one-room apartment.

“Someone will need this chair, and these three plates, and these two forks,” he thought aloud. He hadn’t given notice that he’d be moving, and had only decided eight days earlier that he’d like to leave. And so his landlord would keep his full deposit of three hundred twenty-five dollars, an amount that served as a marker of how long he’d spent in his apartment.

He would find a place to live when he arrived in this new city, with his three plastic suitcases and a job ready for him the following Monday. He hobbled down the narrow stack of steps from his front door to the sidewalk below, carrying and then dragging his luggage, and stopped for a moment to adjust the glasses that had fallen down his nose. He continued on until the nearest bus stop, where he waited for eight minutes, and then scurried up the steps of the next bus.

Ira stood, overwhelmed, just inside the airport. All these people — how did they know where to go? He wandered in the wrong direction for a bit and then, seeing a check-in sign for his airline, found his place in line. Asked to hand over his bags, he asked, “Are you sure they’ll be safe?” to which he received a confused “yes, of course,” and then he felt somewhat reassured. He looked back at the conveyor belt that had just received his luggage, and sighed somewhat nervously when he watched each bag disappear.

Carrying only a chocolate bar and a book of crosswords in his hands, his boarding pass and wallet in his back pocket, Ira wandered through to his terminal, and sat in a chair designated for people like him, those waiting for a plane to a city, population 801,246. His real life was about to begin.

After his section was called, Ira walked and waited, until at last he was sitting on his very first airplane.

He was jammed between a very large, tired-looking woman, and a child who may have belonged to the lady in front of him, or perhaps no one. Airplanes were not so exciting at the moment.

Overhead he heard something mumbled, and he put on his seatbelt when he noticed the very large woman beside him doing the same. He saw a stewardess several yards away, holding up an oxygen mask and smiling. When she walked to the back of the plane, Ira realized that they were already moving — backward, slowly, to prepare for takeoff.

In a few minutes the plane rumbled and hummed, and then it was in the air. They spiraled over water, all ninety-six people, and for the first time, Ira knew what the land beside his hometown looked like from above. In a few more minutes, the plane’s passengers felt a terribly sudden drop — certainly this wasn’t standard? Ira lurched forward, then began to fall, alongside ninety-five other people.

The large woman beside him no longer looked tired, but fearful. The small girl sandwiching him in from the other side frantically looked around, then held her knees to her body and began to cry.

Ira watched a yellow mask drop from above his head but he’d already forgotten how it was to be used. Was he to blow air into the bag? Oh, if only he’d paid closer attention to that mumbling overhead. In his last few minutes, all he could do was live in the present, forgetting, suddenly, about his plan to rebuild in a new city, population 801,246. In the company of ninety-five people, his real life had come to an end.