I had to fly into Newark tonight and I’m not the world’s best air traveler. I’m not what you would call a white-knuckle flyer. I’m more of a white-torso flyer.

The reason I don’t like to fly is because my manager usually books my flights and he is what is commonly referred to as a, oh, what’s the phrase I’m looking for, a cheap bastard.

This man is tighter than an erection in a Speedo.

He was once arrested for shoplifting from a supermarket. His defense was the labels on the bottles of salad dressing said, “Kraft Free.”

So, I arrive at the airport early and got my seat of choice. You know the seat I’m talking about. That’s when you sit in the middle of a row of three seats right between the guy, who apparently did a gram of cocaine before boarding the flight and won’t shut up, and the woman in the window seat with the bladder of a common housefly. I always ask for this seat, whenever I fly. I figure it saves the airline a lot of trouble having to shift a bunch of people around on the plane to make it happen.

And, yes, I was lucky to get the mother with the screaming baby to sit directly behind me. But I did have to pay a little extra to have him kick the back of my seat throughout the entire flight.

I’m ready to board the plane and that’s when I meet our stewardess or, as they like to be called, “flight

attendant”. Right, like that’s going to get me my bag of peanuts any faster. Anyway, she’s a cross between Leona Helmsley and Nurse Ratchett. I ask her a simple question. “What kind of on-time arrival record do you have?” She snaps at me, “One hundred per cent.” I said, “That’s pretty good.” She says, “Well all of our planes arrive somewhere…just maybe not their original destination. And, yes, it is true we are still looking for a few of them. But, we’re pretty sure they’ve arrived somewhere by now.”

Okay, so now my stomach starts churning, but I take my seat. And I’m sitting there watching people put the equivalent of a king-sized mattress into the overhead compartments.

I’m trying to listen to Nurse Ratchett as she’s giving the safety instructions by following along on the plastic card they have in the seat pocket in front of me. But, apparently, they’ve all been replaced with Gideon Bibles.