I had to fly home to Philadelphia to participate in a re-employment services orientation that if missed would result in me forfeiting four weeks of unemployment insurance payments, a trade I wasn’t about to make as the benefits exceeded the cost of the trip by a factor of six.

This was my first time flying solo but as I was flying domestically, had a day of leeway on my arrival time, and had no luggage to check I figured it should be somewhat smooth.  Smooth proved to be an understatement as the total process of being dropped off to being seated in the plane took less than 25 minutes, seemingly an order of magnitude faster than what it’s taken my brother when flying internationally.  The first flight was 37 minutes, short enough that they didn’t offer peanuts but long enough for me to wish I could shoot laser beams from my eyes to silence the lady explaining that her first name was a combination of three holocaust survivors her grandparents met on vacation in Monaco.

The second flight was nowhere near as nice with a single empty seat on the entire plane.  My brother had told me that he’d been approached to pay a fat tax (being required to purchase a second seat which is refunded if the flight isn’t full) and I dodged these on both flights.  I think it’s because my sunglasses are so slimming.