It's mid-morning but I've been up since 3:45am.

I'm sitting on a plane.

I dozed a bit on my first flight of the day but now I'm reading. I make a point of picking the window seat when I can. It just seems like you get the most room that way. There's not as much squishing or contorting yourself, you know?

The woman next to me was talking on the phone right up until we started accelerating for takeoff. And then she whipped out her laptop. Ummm... ok. Maybe she was on a deadline? Who knows. She was toggling between Excel sheets before but now she's surfing Amazon. I can't tell if that's better. 

There's a baby crying a few rows up.

And directly behind me, there's a kid who keeps kicking my seat and giggling. My dad HATED that. Somehow it was always my youngest sister who sat behind him in the car. There were four of us kids and we always sat in the back of an SUV meant for three. So, more often than we'd have liked, my sister would end up bumping the seat in front of her—dad's seat—and he'd fucking flip. Staring into the seat-back in front of me, I take a deep breath. I shift my weight to the left and lean into the window. And I remind myself to unscrunch my chest...

Then I keep reading.

THUMP.

With a sigh, I shake my head. Grinning just slightly, I scooch forward in my seat. Wow... really? I'm not even a little mad?

My eyebrows spring up and the corners of my mouth roll down.

Huh. Uh... ok.

Cool.

* * *

Have you ever overcome something without even realizing it?

onward.

For more on this daily column, read the backstory here. And if you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along.