Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Escape
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Last week at the faculty Halloween party—I teach high schoolers about citizenship and the constitution—a few of my colleagues got to chatting about their vacations. The chemistry teacher, as pale as a ghoul and decked out in a witch’s costume, volunteered that she felt unsafe traveling in what she called “the third world.”
Before I could stop myself, I snapped, “Were you out sick the day we had active shooter drills?”
“Almost anywhere in the world is a helluva lot safer than right here on campus or, for that matter, safer than the mall where we get our school supplies.”
“I’m scared shitless every day, right here at home.” Blowing a hole in the party mood, I barged out of the room.
My name is Noah. My namesake is a ship's captain who went to sea to survive a deluge. I travel to survive the Second Amendment. I tell my students they have the constitutional right to be killed.
Each year, I assign a class debate. Pro or Con: The Declaration of Independence promises “life, liberty and happiness,” but 47,000 dead from gun violence each year proves Americans have given up on life.
I’m so weary of living in a biography written for me by the NRA. In classrooms and shopping centers, from churches to concerts, it’s as if they want me wearing a bulletproof vest.
In my hometown, the store where I buy fishing gear sells both running shoes and hunting rifles as if to suggest shooting humans is the new American sport. Dodging bullets hardly seems sporting to me.
When I’m not teaching, parenting or paying bills, travel is my safe room for hiding from America’s death cult. While I wait for an exorcism–a purge of America’s gun-toting insanity, I take every chance I can to escape to almost any place else.
Exhausted from being constantly frightened, I’m headed for a fishing week in Newfoundland. There, I’ll settle my nerves.
“For your safety and the safety of your fellow passengers, fasten your seat belt low and tight across your lap,” the flight announcement insists. The enforced patience, as the crew gets us ready to take off, settles me deeper into my seat.
Inside an airplane, I’m camouflaged. Just Mister Seat 6B.
From across the aisle, no one aims a weapon at me. The U.S. government has made air travel a gun-free, no-carry zone. Just like other governments make their entire nations gun-free, no-carry zones.
The plane accelerates on the runway, gathering speed. My heart rate slows.
Instead of worrying about bullets in my body, my concern now is turbulence spilling my drink. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve leveled off at 35,000 feet. You are free to move about the cabin,” the pilot tells us. My breathing deepens.
Six miles above ground, flying over the American shooting gallery, I fiddle with the in-flight entertainment screen. I tune to classical music. My eyelids flicker.
I press my hand to my heart and say a silent thanks to the travel gods. For a time at least, I won’t be entering the history books as a gun-death statistic.
Outside my porthole window, white cumulus clouds float like fluffy, roly-poly plush toys. Images of Sandy Hook and Uvalde fade away.
