I was leaning back against the lounge chair seat, when the most horrible noise roared. It was louder than a lawnmower or a garden blower, or perhaps the two combined.
“Relax. It’s just the engine revving up,” Timothy said, patting my hand.
“I have a tranquilizer tablet if she needs one,” Bob said in a harsh whisper.
“Do you want one?” Timothy asked me.
“Not unless the plane is going to crash, and you said it wouldn’t.” I was careful to whisper that very quietly into Timothy’s eat because someone had once told me that it was illegal to say the word crash at an airport.
I tried to ignore the smoke coming out from the engine, but Timothy must have felt my panic.
“It’s supposed to do that,” he said with a soothing voice. (I was lucky that he hadn’t decided to pitch me out of the plane by then. I was turning into a real basket case.)
I thought we’d hit the noisiest part of the whole process, but I was wrong. The engines began to rumble and scream like angry dragons. And the whole plane began to vibrate. It was like sitting on top of a clothes dryer — not that I’d ever done that.
At some point, we finally started down the runway, bumpety, bumpety bump bump. I wondered why the plane didn’t have better shocks on their wheels. But maybe the runway just wasn’t smooth. Wouldn’t that be hard on the tires? A plane did have tires, right?
The lift off was scarier than getting up on a horse, except with an increase of noise, a tooth-jarring vibration, and a steady forward propulsion. I think it was what an astronaut might feel, being shoved back against the seat, and crushed by the pressure.