(Note: Some of this was written in real time, and some of it is my own reflection. It’s hard to make witty similes and metaphors when you’ve been running on 3 hours of sleep a night)
It is the first day and I am already feeling a little lonely and dejected. My group of 80 met up at Newark Airport. As we move through security we make the awkward introductions and small talk that for some reason people (including myself) feel required to make. My social anxiety is off the radar. It’s times like these that I wish I had a cig.
We go through two different levels of security, the regular one and then an extra one at the gate. They don’t screw around on Israeli flights. But I’m feeling a bit dejected. I wasn’t groped once. Not by TSA, not even by accident. Hell, I was barely felt under the armpits. What, am I too unattractive to get touched up on an international flight in an American airport? A new low in the life of Chicky.
Then, of course, I get shafted on seating assignment. Stuck in the middle seat. Next to some equally gangly but very unhealthy kid. Somehow I feel that this is a premonition of how my trip will be – cramped, uncomfortable, loveless, and dodging biological warfare left and right. I then wonder if this may also be a metaphor for Israel’s place in the Middle East. Stuck in the middle, trying to survive an 8 hour plane ride at all costs, even against their fellow Jews. Maybe I AM essentially Israel. I embody the entire country and all its problems and successes. Yeah. That makes sense.
Most likely I’m just tired and cranky. Which is usually how I am. I fall uncomfortably asleep, building a solid mental foundation for a persecution complex to expose itself later on the trip.
If these Birthright people get all their propaganda correctly, maybe Israel will be the country for me after all…
