Search me, frisk me, pat me down. I am flying again, back up, on my feet, tall.

        Staking my claim to the new normalcy, whatever it might be. Seeking a fresh equilibrium. I am proud.

        I feel defiant and weirdly patriotic. Empowered.

        “No one is going to tell me I can't fly,” I said to anyone who'd listen. “I'm flying.”

        Do not let me bring aboard so much as a comb, though. Turn me inside out.

        Don't sweat the impatience of fools. I've got the rest of my life. Take as long as you want.

        Leave my civil liberties in a pile by the door. It is not a civil time.

        Allow my pilot to wear a pistol. Put an armed marshal on my plane.

        Make me check all my bags. Have a trained dog smell them for all things nefarious. Cleanse the plane of everything potentially lethal.

        I am scared.

        Make it safe.

In red, white and blue

        It is Wednesday morning as I write this. On Saturday morning, I will be on an airplane to San Diego, for the Bengals game. I approach the hour with pride and dread, defiance and fear.

        Before Saturday, I will go to a department store, buy a shirt with an American flag on it and wear it to the airport. I will go to the counter at the airport, request a seat upgrade to first class and try to be the first passenger on the plane. It's a silly gesture of meaningless bravado. I know. But it seems strangely important now.

        Flying has never been a civic duty ... until now.

        I will check out my fellow passengers. I will look for faces like those I have seen on the television and in the news magazines.

        I have the terrorist Mohammed Atta's mug superimposed on my brain. His is the face of virgin evil. I will look for those who look like him. It does not make me bigoted. Just human.

        I enjoy long plane rides. It's a time for thinking and reading, tapping on a laptop computer. It's distraction-less. I'll try to keep it that way Saturday.

        “Safest time to fly,” someone said to me at the supermarket. Someone who isn't flying.

Not in your control

        People choose not to fly because they're not in control. Once you're in your seat and the hatch is closed, there is nothing you can do, nothing at all. The plane ascends and either you arrive safely or you don't.

        Every flight is a dice roll. So is every step of every day.

        Only now, flying seems spectacularly frightening.

        And courageous.

        And necessary.

        Absolutely necessary.

        “Once I was on the plane, it felt perfectly normal,” my friend Cris Collinsworth said Tuesday. Mr. Collinsworth flies more than birds. “I didn't find myself looking over my shoulder. I wasn't startled when somebody came up behind me. I'm in more danger at a shopping mall. There's no security there.”

        His words feel like a back rub. They are yet another leg-kick in the chorus line of emotions that have danced since Sept. 11.

        I have never cried so much as I have since then. Never laughed so hard, appreciated more deeply, embraced with greater urgency. Never felt quite so alive.

        Never gave a plane ride a second thought, either. Until now.

        But it is time. Time again, to fly.
       
       Contact Paul Daugherty by phone: 768-8454; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.

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