If it wasn’t obvious before, I’ve never been the world’s biggest fan of air travel. Every single time I fly, the Murphy family luck finds a way to screw me over.

It’s not the flying I mind, though...it’s the people you end up flying with. I’ve always despised airports and the way most people’s brains tend to turn into cold, useless mush as soon as they’ve stepped through the automatic doors into the air-conditioned chaos. Something about the way people go absolutely whacko and mindless in airports made me want to hit someone in the face with my carry-on.

We checked our luggage in with the exception of carry-ons while the boarding passes were printing. The printer’s creeping pace was excruciating. Finally, the desk attendant handed the passes over.

"Thanks for the help," Dad called over his shoulder as we collectively sprinted to the escalator. The rest of us gave hurried nods and waves in the general direction of the desk as we hurried away.

The escalator hauled us to the upper-level security checkpoint. As we tried to hurry into the security line, several people tried cutting into the middle of our group. I had a problem with the way people seemed to think it was just fine to cut short people like me off without warning. They just nudged mom and me out of their way like we were invisible.

"This is BS," I hissed under my breath as I glared at the fourth person to cut between us and the rest of our family.

"Easy on the language," Mom growled. Being cut off turned her into 4 feet and 11 inches of compressed rage. I saw her gritting her teeth out of the corner of my eye and wondered how many more people would subject us to their self-centered rudeness before she went off. That was a disturbing thought because she was about five-thousand times as scary as me when she got on the warpath. She perfected being frightening over the course of 30 years of teaching high school English.

She had long since made an art form of the, "I will rip your soul out through your nostrils if you don’t stop that right now," face. Of course, I gave her a lot of practice with that face when I was a kid, too. I wasn’t exactly an angel, but those are other stories for another time.

At that moment, I just wanted us all to make it to the gate without one of us going ballistic on someone. God knows we don’t want to get into a confrontation with airport cops, I thought. Going through security is bad enough without awkward, explosive incidents. I realized, of course, that the security procedures were necessary. I had very clear memories of 9/11. I was in middle school when it happened, and I remember watching the news in shell-shocked horror on that fateful day.

I cringed as we had to remove shoes and belts and jam our carry-on bags onto the conveyor belt for the x-ray machine.

"I know why we have to do this," Mom muttered. "But taking your shoes off in an airport is downright disgusting. I wonder how many people’s funky foot fungus remnants we’re traipsing through right now?"

"Gross." I suppressed a shudder and wished the security procedures weren’t quite so stressful, especially when you’re traveling in a group of seven. I ended up getting separated from my family due to idiotic underwire issues. It took me eight minutes and a pat-down to clear security even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Since when is having a cup size that requires serious support a crime? I blew out a frustrated sigh at the thought.

Naturally, the rest of the family was outraged and horrified by the holdup. Everyone besides Grandpa Steele was frantic. We ended up being the last people to board the plane and got dirty looks from everyone and his brother as we made our way down the aisle to our coach seats near the back of the plane.

Mom murmured apologies all the way down the aisle, but me rolling my eyes about it behind her back seemed to lessen the impact. I would have preferred to tell them they were being jerks about something we could hardly help.

"Oh, dear God," Aunt Carrie-Lou moaned. She went deathly pale the moment the engines started, and gripped my hand hard enough to pulverize every bone in it. I winced, but I didn’t pull away. Instead, I attempted to be as soothing as I could under the circumstances.

"Everything’s going to be fine, Aunt Carrie. You’re statistically more likely to have a car accident than to have plane trouble," I explained. It didn’t help very much.

The fact that Aunt Carrie-Lou had the window seat didn’t help much. She spent the majority of the flight pulling up the window shade just enough to see that we were, in fact, flying through and above cloud banks. Every time she looked out the window, she slammed the shade shut seconds later, turning progressively greener under her freckles every time she did it.

By the time we reached Atlanta, she was a phosphorescent shade of puce, and my hand was purple and numb. Grandpa Steele didn’t look much better off than Aunt Carrie-Lou, and he made a beeline for a smoking area the second we were off the plane. Part of me couldn’t blame him. The flight had been pure hell filled with screaming children and turbulence that only occurred any time I got up and went to the bathroom.

While we were in Atlanta, I checked my texts, hoping for a message from Rick. There were only two.

Out with Meredith today, so I probably won’t be able to talk much. I couldn’t resist the urge to wrinkle my nose and roll my eyes at that one. I hated Rick’s girlfriend with every fiber of my being.

You might wanna post that video you got this morning to that anonymous Cheat Busters website they talked about on the news the other day.

That’s actually kind of perfect, I thought.

We almost missed our flight from Atlanta to Cancun because Dad and Uncle Ray ended up arguing about gate numbers and directions, among other things. By the time we landed in Cancun, everyone but Mom, Dad, and Tina looked as if they’d been through Hell and back. I certainly felt that way.

I caught a rough stroke of luck and got stuck sitting between a guy with killer B.O. and an ill pregnant lady. The poor woman only made it to the toilet about half the times she started retching with overwhelming “morning” sickness, and the bags provided on the airplane were too few and far between to really help her situation. Stinky marinated in sweat and leaned unnecessarily against my shoulder for the entire flight. I wanted to run down the aisle screaming the second we touched down in Mexico, and that was before we had to go through customs and baggage claim.

As if that weren’t enough of an ordeal all by itself, our taxi driver scared the bejesus out of our entire family. He seemed to have no regard for human life, inside the taxi or out. Some of us cussed. Some of us prayed. We were all grateful as hell when the cab stopped and we were able to pile out onto the sidewalk, all feeling blessed that we were still alive.