Another Kind of Image

I have a mild neurosis: alway worry that I'll be late to the plane for a trip. Spend more time in terminals than is really necessary because of this.

Am flying to London in September. Have flown to Europe a number of times before without incident. Closest ever to not getting home or catching a flight/connection was the fiasco in LAX last month.

I keep having this dream that I miss my connection/flight home from London and am royally screwed. Why my dream-self considers getting stuck in Europe royally screwed, I have no idea. It's happened several ways.

• Dream 1: I go to the wrong airport. That anyone would allow me to drive in London.......
• Dream 2: the security (or customs?) line winds through the basement, up a drippy rusting stairwell, and then the Official I encounter tells me I'm violating some law and have to step out of line and wait. It's very Kafka. While waiting, I end up in a multi-story parking lot looking for my car, which cannot be there, and miss my flight. As if I have the world's most severe case of ADD e-v-e-r.
• Dream 3: I am without my passport. Left it in the hotel? I dash to the gate, which is this super-fly jazz lounge, and try to explain that my name is on the manifest, I have made it here, but my passport has evaporated. No sale. I watch my plane pull away. I run to the bathroom, there's my passport. Dash back, screaming at the bartender/flight attendant, who calls the plane back for me while amused loungers wonder whether I've ever travelled before.
• Dream 4: I leave my purse on the plane from UK and can't get on the plane to STL as have no ID, or money. Am told to deal with it. Think that I could stay in a hotel, realize have no money. Plead case again. Nearly punch impressively unconcerned airline employee. I suggest there might be a lost and found, there is, I go, there's my purse, with my passport (which I don't need in the States), but no wallet, no notebook, no stuffed blue monkey (a totem). Am screwed.

They're getting unevenly worse. And less logical. See, if I have my passport, I have ID and can get on the plane, but instead decide that I can't because I don't have my driver's liscence. Sheez, self, get a grip!

Sooooo, that's since about June. I'm averaging two a month. Please, concentrate for a few moments between now and mid-September on two things: the calming of my dream-self, and the actual well-greased ease of this trip! Because that's a lot of unconscious worry over a pretty familiar activity.