Air Canada flight to Narita.
The fog of my sleeping pill is keeping me from particularly cohesive thought – pardon my scrambled brain. But, this proves it, I can’t sleep on planes. Maybe if I took the whole pill instead of half, but the fraction has always been enough when I needed to sleep at home. Perhaps desperate times call for the ever-so-desperate measure of a whole sleeping pill.
Obviously, I’ve managed to make it onto the plane and I’m off to Japan. I had a nice little freak out two nights ago when the soft bed at my uncle’s house prompted my back to violently lash out at me. At three in the morning when I could hardly move, I panicked. ‘What if my back just keeps getting worse? My health is deteriorating and I’m only bound to follow my Dad’s course of constant pain or medication. I’ve already shown symptoms of his ailments, but I’ve shown them at half his age.’
And the paranoia continued, ‘If I’m in this much pain now, it can only get worse. If it gets worse while I’m in Japan, not only will I be known as the gimpy gaijin, I’ll be pretty damn miserable.’
But back to the predominantly pain-free present. As I write this, conversations buzz through the plane’s cabin and the pursuit of sleep has been abandoned by all but the most stalwart snoozers. I did manage a one-hour nap, but that half of a little blue sleeping pill seems now to have exited my system. No more rest for me. I just hope I don’t pass out in a salad as has been related by some former JETs. Wait, maybe if I had a drink of wine, it would mix well with the sleeping pill and I could pass out for the rest of the flight.
I should mention the fantastic teamwork of my father, my uncle and I as we exacted revenge for an earlier seven-beats-all defeat at the hands of mother, aunt and cousin. It was such a formidable rout, it deserves and out-of-context journal entry.