Jon Dawson: Sleeping bag vending machines introduced at airports

Travelers enjoy their Christmas Eve at the airport. / Photo from Pinterest.

I've just returned home from this year's church Christmas play. Reporters from Variety and The Sondheim Review were on hand and could not stop raving.

I have plenty to be thankful for - a great wife, great children, and a somewhat unconventional face that landed me on the cover of But He Has A Great Personality magazine a record 27 times. Something I'm specifically grateful for this time of year is the solace in knowing I don't have to travel during the holidays.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a nice road trip when it comes to playing music or investigating a new record store. But the idea of being trapped in any form of conveyance during the week of Christmas for longer than 20 minutes gives me a five-alarm case of the heeby-jeebies.

If I had to travel, it would be done by car. I doubt there's enough money in all of creation to ever get me on an airplane again, or as David Letterman described it, "The Screamin' Baby Express".

I actually sympathize with babies who get upset on airplanes. No one in their right mind would want to be flying through the air in a metal tube with a bunch of maniacs who make the lobby of a bus station look like a cotillion mixer.

Let's be generous and say 80% of the people on a flight know how to act, which leaves plenty of folks walking around without their shoes on, coughing without covering their mouths and watching R-rated movies on their mobile devices without using headphones so the 3-year-old sitting behind them can learn all sorts of new words - none of which have ever sponsored an episode of Sesame Street.

As it turns out, the screaming baby is the only honest person on the flight. If you could tap into the inner monologue of most passengers that's what you'd be hearing. 

I've traveled via airplane four times. Instead of growing more comfortable with each flight, my gargantuan fear of flying grew by leaps and bounds. The last time I flew the ride was so bumpy I thought we were hitting potholes or morbidly obese geese in the sky.

A flight attendant assured me it was just "pockets of air" that were causing the trouble. I told him I was worried the "pockets of air" might cause the plane to "hurdle to the ground". No one likes a whiner, but what kind of airline chooses The Buddy Holly Story as the Inflight movie?

On the same flight, a five-year-old boy was running around the plane, bumping into an already homicidal flight attendant who during the preflight seat belt demonstration kept taking swigs of "coffee" from a flask. By the time we were over Delaware, the little boy was bouncing off of the door of the plane. I pointed this out to the flight attendant, who by now had put away roughly a barrel of "coffee". 

"He's too small to actually open the door," she said. "And if he did, your seat belt would probably keep you from being sucked out of the plane."

If nothing else, the little kid bouncing off the door helped subside my fears of perishing in a plane crash. Now I was worried about being Hoovered into the great wide open without a parachute or change of clothes. 

Eventually, the flight attendant who would be Nietzsche blocked off the area around the door and asked little Damien's parents to intervene. When we landed at RDU airport I hugged the ground and wrote it a long, rambling, multi-page love letter.  During the flight, I'd made a deal with God that if he saw fit to allow this plane to land safely I'd never leave the ground again, and as of this writing, I've kept my word.

Now say you're a well-adjusted person who isn't afraid of flying. What about the flight delays at Christmas? By the time you make it to your destination, it'll be Valentine's Day. One family was stranded at the Atlanta airport for so long last Christmas they had to start homeschooling their children in the gift shop. 

Here's hoping all your holiday travels are uneventful this year. Merry Christmas!