o caffeine. Caffeine gets me jacked up and then my right leg will bounce helplessly, hammering the whole time, and if someone points this out, I will have to tell them, “Look, somebody has to fly this plane.”

No trashy magazines. I used to love trashy magazines for a flight—sure, we might lurch into a flaming, spiraling descent, but people, Reese Witherspoon is just like us!-- but now all trashy magazines make me sad. I prefer Sky Mall. I like to write little notes in it for the next person who reads it. I feel confident that Sky Mall deserves a dialogue in our culture, one we are not having because we keep reading it alone. But we need a Sky Mall symposium. Can we talk about the hot dog toaster? The leg pumps? All that woodland elves jewelry?

No alcohol. It seems like a good idea--a great idea!--but it will fuck with your sleep and your body in weird ways. It will dehydrate you, terribly. And the wine and beer on planes really sucks.

The best thing to do is to find something that is fully immersive, totally distracting. In other words, probably not that book you keep meaning to read but don’t. A movie could work. Sudoko! A scavenger hunt on the plane, an imaginary shopping spree through Sky Mall. Reading every letter ever sent to you by the person you love. Something, something. Not: The new Dan Brown book. But okay, maybe the new Dan Brown book works for you. I, on the other hand, have bought The Departed, which sucks me in from the first bagpipes. I plan to be on the ground of New Orleans before Leo leaves his brains all over the back of that elevator, which is really where I’d like the movie to end anyway, sentimentalist that I am.

And then the plane lands, and everyone is safe, and you are not even drunk, but you are now the proud owner of two hot dog toasters and a tinkling sculpture fountain that changes lights. Everyone wins!