My time up in the air was, as always, complete bliss. Despite the cramped conditions and rampant flatulence from the crush of humanity around me—what is it about airplanes that makes people fart so much? scientists, can you please do a study?—I adore my time on airplanes. I always have. Last October I did 10 hours to Tokyo like a pro. In fact, any flight that lasts for less than five hours—which is any flight that isn’t going from one coast to another—always feels prematurely truncated to me. Whenever the announcement is made that the cabin needs to be prepared for landing—seat-backs upright, luggage stowed, etc.—I pout like a five year old who’s being sent to his room. Please don’t make me go back to life on the ground, I think. Down there, I have bills to pay and weird bumps on my body that need to be checked out and vitamins that need to be eaten and writing that needs to get done. Just before the airplane’s wheels touch the tarmac, just before they let out that welcome-back-to-reality, horror-movie scream, I wonder if $100 would be enough to get the pilot to take this old bird back up and to fly it around for an hour while I watch another two, three episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

Now, the exact specifics of what transpired on my Christmas flight from Vancouver to Toronto are a little hazy. This is what I know for certain: I dozed off at some point and woke with a crossword puzzle partially completed in my lap. I maneuvered that air-blower thing above my head so that the cool, germ-infused air was blowing directly on the front of my face. I watched a Woody Allen movie on the seat-back TV—Blue Jasmine—though I couldn’t tell you the first thing about it other than Andrew “Dice” Clay wasn’t too bad in it.

In my memory of the flight, everyone around me, including the men’s cologne-aficionado seated in front of me, are all flickering phantoms. I recently discovered that Ativan, the small but apparently powerful pill that I dissolve on my tongue right after I fasten my seatbelt—the miracle pill that saves me from behaving like Hodor on Game Of Thrones when he hears thunder—has been proven to cause low-grade amnesia. This is likely why I can’t recall any details from any of my flights for the last 10 years. Except for a San Diego flight where, feeling lucky, I asked a French-Canadian flight attendant out on a date. But that’s a story for another time, kids. Or, maybe it’s a combination of the pharmaceuticals and the fact that every flight, like an airborne version of Groundhog Day, is virtually identical to every other flight. I sit in the same window seat. I work out a crossword puzzle. I doze. I play a video game for a while. I doze. I read a few pages of a novel. Doze. I watch part of a movie, drink a warm ginger ale, doze, and so on. Maybe that’s what I like so much about flying—the sheer monotony of it all.

The single memorable event from last December’s Toronto flight occurred about 30 minutes prior to landing. A flight attendant announced that there were several people on board who desperately needed to deplane quickly in Toronto in the name of making a cutting-it-close connecting flight to Florida. “Would everyone be so kind as to allow these Florida-bound passengers—you know who you are—to get off the plane first?” she said.

I looked at my watch and realized that I had a mere 35 minutes to land, get through customs, claim my luggage, recheck my luggage, and make my way to my terminal which was at the far end of the Toronto airport. Like those Floridians, I, too, was cutting it close. Hey! I wanted to shout. People from Syracuse are people too, you know. The fact that this get-off-first privilege wasn’t being extended to me, the sole Syracusan on the plane, made me angry (as angry as a person on a magic-carpet Ativan ride can be; which, in truth, isn’t really all that angry).

Now, normally I’d never do something like this, but during the Christmas holidays, when the airport briefly turns into the island from The Lord Of The Flies, I would do what needed to be done to make that connecting flight. I pictured my aging parents, who, in their excitement—they always get excited when I come home, which, I have come to realize later in life, is a blessed thing—no doubt had already started their hour-long drive to the snowy airport in Syracuse in anticipation of my arrival. The least I could do on my end was pretend to be a harried Floridian for five minutes and deplane when the Florida people deplaned.

As soon as the plane docked at the gate and the seatbelt sign was switched off, I grabbed my carryon and bulled my way through my fellow passengers, saying, “Excuse me, coming through, connecting flight to Florida to catch.” At the front of the plane, 10 or so of us Floridians had gathered. I’m almost certain I wasn’t the only one doing a little acting that evening. When the plane door finally opened, we were, as promised, the first ones off. “Have a nice flight to Tampa!” a toothy flight attendant said to me. Though I’m a bad actor, I said, “Florida sunshine, here I come!”

Once I was in the Toronto terminal, I took a moment to congratulate myself for my bold action. Bravo. Then I got my bearings and located the signs directing me to the terminal where—and I didn’t know this yet—there was no plane waiting to take me to Syracuse, and where I would learn that I would not be going anywhere for the next 24 hours. Mom and dad, here I come, I thought and began my mad dash through the crowds.