Auntie Loach

Auntie Loach
by Pat A Physics

I used to fly with my aunt places.  But she passed away and now I fly alone.
She would always get the window seat and shut the blind.  I felt like she
was wasting the potential view.  I think I mentioned it once and she told me
that she didn’t like heights.  Funny that she never overcame her fear
until her death.  I now have the window seat and look out of it at the city
passing below.  Imagining her fear is not easy.  One might just compare it
to other fears.  Bugs, mimes, people with the name “Wayne,” but I think
that it is more like being afraid of starting a conversation, of exposing others
to your ignorance, jumping into the deep end of the pool.  Once we had a talk
about the ozone layer.  Let’s destroy the ozone, she said, build more cars
and factories and let’s fry our brains out with black sunshine.  I never could
get her to take off her sunglasses.  I told her that it looked as though she were
hungover.  She replied that she would take them off and stick them up my ass.
She was buried with them on.  At the funeral, I threw flowers at an angle
toward her face to see if I could get the sunglasses off.  The little seat cushions
that act as life-preservers in the event that the plane would crash land in the
ocean were also a source of debate.  She said that the upholstry would not be
boyant enough to support a stranded passenger.  I told her that the test for this
would be simple for the airline to do.  They could just throw it into a swimming
pool and have someone swim with it and see how long they could tread water.
Wow, that must be why my ticket is exorbitantly priced, she had countered,
all of these seat cushions had to be dry-cleaned after being thrown into the pilot’s
backyard swimming pool.  She never said yes to the peanuts, and she would never
get gingerale like normal people.  She always asked for something the stewardess
didn’t have and acted shocked.  The priest told everyone gathered at her grave
to bow their heads in rememberance as I spotted a plane between two clouds.
People shifted as I took an abrupt exit.  She loved to tell me what was wrong
with everybody on the plane in her nasal whisper.  It was compulsory that I join in
on her game and tear people apart, make fun of them.  She always loved that.