“Yakety Yak, Don’t Talk Back”

Growing up I was never a fan of planes. Especially as a kid, the pressure, loud noises and the thought of being so high up in the air freaked me out! When I was about 5 years old, I took a plane to Des Moines, Iowa with my whole family to visit my grandparents for the summer. My brother had let me borrow his CD player for the plane ride there to help me calm my nerves.

As we boarded the plane, my nerves began to kick in. Once I found my seat, I buckled myself in and focused on my breathing. The plane took off and soon enough we were in the air. I began to feel uneasy and pulled out the CD player that my brother so kindly let me borrow. I placed the headphones over my ears and skipped to my favorite song, in hopes that this would help me forget that I was on an airplane. I started listening to the song “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters. At the time, this was one of my favorite songs.

It didn’t take long until I started to loosin’ up and forget all about the plane ride. I slowly started to turn up the volume on the CD player until I heard absolutely no noise outside of my music. I began to feel calm and happy again. I even began to sing along to my music! But of course, I wanted to hear myself sing with the music. So instead of turning the music down and humming a little quietly to the vocals, I began to sing at the top of my lungs, not realizing that everyone around me on the plane was laughing and staring at me! And the worst part about it was, my mom, who was sitting next to me, let this go on for about 3 minutes before telling me, because she was just so happy to see me forget about my phobia of planes!