Emotional as dice

Flights are like purgatory. At the moment that you enter the plane, you're at a singular point in your life - however depressing or exhilarating that point may be. And then you sit in the metal tube for a few hours, belted into your seat, like a surreal version of Star Trek, until you reach the other end and step out into an entirely new part of your life. New place, new people, new time, new mood. It's the closest we have to a time travel machine.

Like a couple of dice, enclosed in a fist and rattled and shaken, only to be forcibly expelled into a whole new world. It's no wonder, then, that flights should leave you feeling somewhat vulnerable. Emotionally vulnerable, I mean.

In any case, that's my explanation, this emotional vulnerability, for why I don't normally cry for movies, even the sad ones, but if I watch the same movies on a plane, it's a time for pure emotional purging. Of their own accord, my eyes start weeping like leaking taps. You know - on the plane - about the only place where you particularly don't want to cry in public, because now the person strapped into the seat next to you thinks you're crazy. And they can't do anything about it or move somewhere else, because they're physically belted in next to you.

And you try to suppress the tears, but it's as futile as trying to suppress hiccups, this only causes them to come out with reinforced exuberance. Suddenly the tears are just gushing, accompanied by a fair share of blubbering, snorting, sniffling and honking, while the person next to you continues to witness this spectacle through subtly averted eyes, keeping a watch on you in mounting horror and discomfort. And then they catch a glimpse of what you are watching, and realise it's a comedy, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

I mean, who would normally cry for a movie like that, right? The only explanation I can have for my behaviour, therefore, is the emotional vulnerability induced by a flight. Like dice, being rattled and shaken, and forcibly expelled at the other end.