A little Chardonnay makes the medicine go down

I hate flying, but I love airports. I don't mind waiting at the airport as long as I have a couple glasses of wine, an appetizer and a People magazine. I'm excited to get to wherever I'm going, but I absolutely hate take-offs. I feel like that's when all of the bad things happen with flying, and I hate that I have no control.
Not that I'm any better of a driver when I'm in control. I went skydiving in Lake Perris, CA, with my friends Angela and Jason on my 26th birthday. I'm overtly paranoid that I am going to rear end the driver in front of me so I'll slam on the brakes if I see red brake lights even a football field ahead of me. As I was dropping off Jason he turned to me and said, "the scariest part of today was your driving." Not even jumping out of a plane at 13,000 feet rattled Jason as much as my driving. I guess that's what you get when you grow up in a small town and learn how to drive from the woodshop teacher.
I was flying recently, and didn't have any cocktails before take-off. Big mistake. I'm sure that we were never in any real danger, but for the first half hour of the flight we were engulfed in a sea of whiteness. 'How can they see?' I thought. I secretly started praying that somehow Captain Sully was our pilot. I was next to the window, with a businessman in his mid-thirties next to me. He was completely unaffected by our, in my mind, impending doom. He had his laptop out and was putting together some sort of power point presentation. I squeezed my eyes shut, and gripped onto the armchair next to me. A few minutes had passed when I noticed that the armchair shifted a bit. I cracked an eye open, and looked down to see that I was not gripping the armchair, but the leg of the passenger next to me. My eyes flew open, and I looked over at him, immediately releasing my grip.
He looked at me and laughed. "Nervous about flying?"
"Yes. I'm sorry if I left fingernail marks on your leg."
"Yes, well, I'll try to hide them from my wife."
How embarrassing. "Could you grab the beverage cart when it comes by again?"