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When I fly, I find only one part of the process truly frightening. It’s not that I’ll oversleep and miss my flight. (I set two alarms.) It’s not the fear of crashing. It’s not even having to sit next to someone who, cell phone to ear, yammers on so loudly at the gate everyone in the vicinity can hear a conversation none of us wants any part of.
No, my only fear of flying is, once back home, getting through the abominable parking pay station at the Eugene Airport so the gate will lift and I can stop fretting about the 23 vehicles behind me and how I’m inconveniencing their drivers and what I will do if I’m not able to figure out this inane system in which I’m unsure where, exactly, to scan my parking ticket and whether to leave my credit card in or quickly retract it and which side of the card should go first, and whether I might get so desperate I’ll have to push the Help button, meaning that little on-screen person will appear and I’ll wonder if he’s real or some AI bot who doesn’t give a rip if I stay permanently ensconced in Dante’s 10th circle of hell.
Not that I let little stuff like this bother me.
If you think this is a column about unnecessarily complicated automated systems or how the Eugene Airport should go back to its human-staffed booths featuring people who would, when you’d return from a trip, smile, take your credit card and receipt and give you a receipt back while asking how your trip was, it’s not.
True, I remain flummoxed at how poor airports, toll booths, parking garages and car washes can be in explaining automated systems that often have to be navigated quickly. Note to communication people who represent such entities: Please read the rest of this column and realize how inept some of your customers, like me, are. Then dumb down your signage accordingly.
I have a social anxiety disorder involving having to navigate complex systems in which my failure to do so will inconvenience those behind me.
I hate parking garages. No two automated pay stations are alike. I fear I won’t be able to get in. I fear that if I somehow manage to get in, I’ll get stuck and won’t be able to get out.
In December, I invited two friends to a Ducks men’s basketball game with pregame pizza at Track Town. I took special pride in reserving a parking spot in a nearby garage. But I melted down when I wasn’t sure which parking garage it was. I was so fearful about trying to enter one garage — and, with perhaps a car or two behind me, realizing I was at the wrong garage — that I chose instead to park in a university lot with the threat of being towed.
“Let me guess,” said one of the guys. “You weren’t the guy who wanted the basketball with your team down by one with 5 seconds left.”
“No,” I said. “I was a JV manager.”
“Figures.”
Toll booths terrify me. In 2024, crossing Lake Washington on the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge from Bellevue to Seattle, I nearly had a panic attack. Never mind that I spent most of the 1980s on that very bridge, waiting in traffic jams; 40 years later, with nobody having bothered to notify me, everything had changed.
As I got closer to the bridge, I kept seeing electronic signs flashing something about toll fees. What lane did I need to be in? How much would it cost? Debit? Credit? Cash? The possibilities whipped me back and forth like the Columbus Day Storm.
In the end, I didn’t need to do anything. I got a bill weeks later; a camera had captured an image of my license plate. But how was I to know that? Bad signage.
And don’t even get me started about a six-lane freeway in Poland wherein I not only had to figure out which lane to get in based on signage whose words looked like nothing more than an eye chart — a bunch of c, z, e, y, k letters, most with diacritical marks on them — but then figure out how much I must pay in Polish zloty.
“I got in the proper lane at one of those foreign toll booths,” my father-in-law told me, “but then I couldn’t figure out how to get the window down in the rental car.”
Finally, a kindred spirit. Goodness, I’ve had difficulty even starting rental cars.
Which reminds me of another social anxiety disorder for me — going to a gas station in a rental car and not knowing how to open the fuel-tank flap. In Hawaii two weeks ago for our 50th wedding anniversary celebration, Sally and I couldn’t figure it out. My truck’s flap has something like a pie flute you pull on. Sally’s car has an easily found button inside. But our rental had neither. As someone pulled up behind me, spiking the pressure, we ransacked the inside of that car. No button.
Finally, Sally pushed on the flap itself. Who knew? Certainly not us — until then.
When the online clock is running for me to choose new seats at Autzen Stadium, which I did the other day, I don’t feel as much pressure because nobody else is counting on me to succeed. If I fail, I fail anonymously, which isn’t nearly as vexing.
The irony, of course, is that I’ve spent my entire life as a writer and speaker, in which failure is not anonymous at all. But writing and speaking are far easier than trying to figure out some machine that has three slots, two scan pads and more instructions than in a kit to build the Hindenburg.
A three-hour deadline to write a story is manageable. Speaking in front of 3,500 people is a rush. But put me on an airplane with a carry-on suitcase that needs stowing in an overhead bin and my legs turn to jelly.
I’m sure there will be space for everyone’s suitcase but mine. Or there will be a slot but my bag won’t quite fit. I’ll be trying to squeeze the bag in while flight attendants roll their eyes and those already seated watch with sanctimonious looks on their faces that seem to say to my fragile soul, “I didn’t have any problem with my overhead bag.”
Public humiliation comes naturally for me. But I hate when it costs others something. I hate the idea that my inability to figure something out will inconvenience someone else.
This suggests either I embrace empathy for others or I fear embarrassing myself, probably a combination of both.
In such preflight moments, I might as well be starring in Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play “No Exit.” I can’t move forward. I can’t move backward. I am center stage, my heart racing, my vulnerability naked to the world.
Less daunting, but still nerve-wracking, are speaking gigs at which the emcee invites people to begin the buffet line. “And, Bob, why don’t you go first?”
My heart plummets like a runaway elevator. If only the emcee knew how many times I’ve been the lead-off hitter in the buffet line, each scoop of rice, each tong-grab of salad, each ladle of dressing like a high wire act for me, so fearful am I that a spilled dollop of blue cheese dressing might contaminate the less controversial ranch.
Or that my indecision regarding chicken or fish might slow down the entire line, knocking the event off schedule and ultimately making those in the audience glance at their watches or reach for their car keys when they should be laughing while I tell them about setting myself on fire while trying to replace a microwave oven.
Lest you think I am hopeless, I’ll end with one moment of panic in which I turned lemons into lemonade. At the San Francisco airport, I experienced one of those “worst nightmare” moments. I’d spoken at a conference at which I’d sold copies of my book, “A Father for All Seasons,” and was flying home. One of my two checked luggage bags contained books. Few had sold at the event.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the United Airlines check-in agent, “but your bag is 3 pounds above our 50-pound limit.”
I gulped, glanced at the line behind me and let desperation lead the way.
“Hey,” I said as I unzipped the bag. “You look like a father — and I’ll bet you have a bunch of friends who are fathers, too. How would you like 3 pounds worth of books?”