While I knew that the day was eventual, I also did not know it was coming so soon.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about my sister’s engagement — or, rather, I blogged about the method of my future brother-in-law’s proposal. And this last weekend, out for lunch with my folks, my Dad voiced his opinion that he hoped she’d hurry up and plan the darn thing so that plans could be made.

In fact, the last I’d heard was that a tentative date for the wedding would be sometime next fall. But this morning my sister hit me up on gchat with some details, and so, the middle of June, I’ll be packing my bags and catching a flight for a small, family only wedding in Colorado.

No, no, her wedding day isn’t the day I mentioned when I said a day was eventual.

So, here’s the thing: I’ve flown on an airplane maybe a dozen times in my life. And in my adult* life? Twice. Okay, that was a flight with a stopover to Boston from BWI, but I’m still counting it at as two flights, not four. And that flight(s)? Was back in either early 2000, or early 2001 (Hey, E, when did I come visit you gals at Northeastern?).

My family, excluding my sister, all live within easy driving distance. My friends, with some exceptions, all live within easy Metro or driving distance. While I do want to go tour some of the great sites of the world (Europe, especially), this is really the first point in my life where I’m able to afford to do so; yet, my financial concerns — paying down debt, putting money into a savings account, and yes, accruing enough PTO — must be my immediate priority before traveling to distances far enough to warrant plane travel become routine.

So in about four months I’m going to get on an airplane for the first time in nearly a decade. I’ve heard the post 9/11 horror stories of airline travel, and I don’t remember the boarding process as being much fun before that.

On top of all of this, if you must know, I’m a bit of a home-body: I get homesick. I miss my cats. I miss my apartment. I miss my neighborhood haunts and yes, even my regular routine. I miss my coworkers. The people I see on the bus. Even, sometimes, the clients.

And I’ll admit it, the Kevin Smith/Southwest Air “situation” has me a little nervous too.

I don’t know what Kevin Smith weighs. I know that I struggle with my weight (250lbs), and I lose a prime source of exercise when the weather becomes too cold to make my routine hike from the Bookstore to my apartment in the evenings**. I am, in fact, worried that I’ll be kicked off an airplane while trying to get to my sister’s wedding, or that I’ll be kicked off an airplane trying to get home from my sister’s wedding.

Honestly, it wasn’t something I’d thought about, like, at all. Even after reading some of the posts that the event inspired, I didn’t actually have a “wait, this could happen to me” moment, possibly because in terms of body image, I’m horribly self-delusional (what, you mean I’m not a sexy beast?)

In any case, from Salon’s Broadsheet:

Here’s the first thing I think of when this issue comes up, for instance: The weekend my mom was dying. Two of my siblings and I got to her bedside within hours of getting the call that she’d had a massive heart attack. Our other sister took two days to get there. She could fly coach, technically, with a seatbelt extender and the armrests digging into her sides. But she couldn’t afford two seats, especially on such short notice, and knew she might be forced to buy another if the airline decided she was too big to count as a single human being. She knew she might be bumped from the flight she’d paid for, and forced to wait around for one that was less full, for who knows how long, while our mother’s organs were shutting down in another country. And she knew that even if she was allowed to fly on the flight she’d booked, there was every chance she’d end up sitting next to someone who would spend the whole time sighing heavily and throwing her dirty looks — then probably spend the rest of her life telling the story of being next to that awful fat woman on a flight from Boston to Toronto, that disgusting creature who just booked a single seat without a thought to the people who would have to brush up against her monstrous bulk for a couple of hours, like she had to be somewhere so important it was worth inconveniencing strangers.

So, rather than deal with any of that, my sister chose to drive a thousand miles as fast as she could, hoping she’d get there in time. While she was on the road, the doctors informed us that there was nothing else they could do, so the whole family’s focus shifted from wondering whether Mom would make it to wondering whether my sister would. A nurse reassured us that Mom would hold on long enough (“They always wait for their babies”) and as it turned out, she did. Just. But that agonizing day of asking my mother to please hang on a little longer — while she was wracked with pain beyond the reach of morphine, moaning like a wounded animal when awake enough to communicate at all — is the first thing I always think of when the debate about whether fat people deserve affordable air travel comes up. You think of some lumbering beast who had the gall to “steal” an inch of your seat that one time. I think of a dying woman waiting for the last of her babies to say goodbye.

So, yeah, maybe I should give up the Skittles and the Cheddar Jalapeano Cheetos for a few months. Who knows, maybe I’ll score with a bridesmaid!

(Er, except it’s a family only wedding, so that could be icky).

*Defined as post high-school.

**Because I feel very self conscious about being in the gym in my building (technically, the next one over). Everyone I always see in there is slim and fit and I feel self conscious enough just using the value-adder to add money to my laundry card.