Someone told me once about a bug. It’s not the kind of bug you can catch and keep in a jar like I sometimes like to do. And it’s not like a flu kind of bug that sits in your tummy and makes you feel sick. I don’t know exactly what it looks like, but I imagine that it’s all the colours of the rainbow all put together and it’s beautiful and exotic. It doesn’t have one home; it’s all over the world. I’m told that people either catch it or they don’t, but if they do, it holds on tight and can stay with you forever.

I am eight years old. Mummy and Daddy just told me today that I will be going on a plane in two weeks. This is so super fantastic! The best news I have ever heard in forever and ever. I can’t sleep. I try real real hard, as hard as I can hard, but my head is buzzing around and around and it just won’t stop. I have never been on a real airplane before. Some of my friends have but only the really lucky ones. I get to fly all the way to England which is on the other side of the world. We have had visitors from England come and see us before but it’s never been the other way around. This is my first real time doing real traveling. I get to miss two whole weeks of school and I have to do a huge report in front of my whole class about my trip and what I learned when I’m back to make up for it, but I don’t care one bit because I get to fly on a plane! Through the sky! To the other side of the world! Up up and away…

Finally it’s two weeks later and the day is here that I never ever thought would actually come. We drive to the airport and wait for three long hours because Daddy is very prompt and pays attention to travelling rules and travelling rules say to arrive at the airport three hours before an international flight. Finally the electronic board flashes the right combination and the garbled voices over the PA system tell us that it’s our turn to go on the plane. This is it! The moment I’ve been waiting for! We walk through a weird tunnel that makes me feel as though I’m a little elf walking through a giant accordion and we’re greeted at the end of the giant accordion by a group of smiling people saying Welcome! and Straight ahead, Ma’am and Have a wonderful flight! Then we’re finally inside the plane and it’s gigantic. It’s not anything like what I pictured in my head. It’s so long that when I get on I can’t see the back and there are little numbers for all of the seats and smiling people and tired people and little cubbies for our belongings above our heads. A pretty lady wearing a uniform and bright red lipstick brings over a basket full of candies for us to chew so our ears don’t hurt and we eat food at a funny time and I’m still so super excited.

I’ve been excited for two whole weeks straight and I can’t believe that I’m really up in the air shooting through the sky right now. It doesn’t feel like we’re going as quickly as we really are, but in real life we’re really zooming. We’re going so far away that it will take hours and hours even though we’re zooming. There’s no other way of even getting there other than by boat but that would take days and days instead of hours and hours. I look out the window and we’re so high up in the sky that everything looks miniature down below and not very real. I wonder if the people down below are looking up at the sky when they hear our plane going over their backyard or their school or their work like I do when I’m down below and I hear a plane up above me. You can’t help but look, can you? I wave out the tiny window just in case anyone can see me. I hope they’re jealous that I am on a plane getting to have this adventure while they’re down there on the street doing their everyday things. And then we’re so high up that we can’t even see anything down below anymore.

We get to go and visit the pilots in the cockpit and see all of the bright lights and buttons they get to play with while we’re sitting in our seats eating peanuts and doing crosswords. Wow! I have no idea how they keep everything straight and know which button does what thing even though they explain a lot of it to us. There are clouds outside the windows with the little personal shutters and funny smells and lots and lots of different kinds of people all around. There are movies to watch and two floors but we can’t go in half of the plane because that’s where the people go that paid for privacy. I drink tomato juice and ginger ale and walk down the long aisles where I’m allowed to go to stretch my legs and I pee in the doll-sized metal bathrooms with the funny loud sounds. I wonder where my pee goes after I flush. I hope that’s not what really falls on my head when I’m down below on the ground and I think that it’s raining.

After a while, the lights get dim and Mummy tells me to close my eyes and go to sleep and rest because it’s a long journey and we have lots of things to do and people to see when we get there and I won’t want to be tired. I curl up tight like a shrimp and I’m so small I have made my body into a tiny circle on the airplane seat. Mummy says she wishes she was small enough to do that too and I try and try to sleep but I’ve never been very good at sleeping so while everyone else on the plane is fast asleep, I’m wide awake the whole time we’re in the sky. How can everyone else sleep through all of this excitement?!

After forever, we finally land with a giant thud when the wheels touch the ground. I forgot that the plane had wheels and it seems funny that when it’s on the ground it drives just like a really huge car and parks in a monster-sized parking space. We wait in a long line to get off the plane and then we wait in another huge line to speak to a very serious man behind a pane of glass who we have been warned not to make any jokes around and then we wait in another huge line and then our bags come around and around with everyone else’s on a giant conveyor belt and we have to check the tags to make sure we’re not walking off with someone else’s bag that just looks like our own. We see our relatives that I don’t really know very well because they’ve come to meet us from the plane because we never get to see them and so it’s a big deal. We all hug and tell them about our plane ride and we walk out the big sliding doors and get in Grandpa’s car.

The minute the engine starts I’m fast asleep, dreaming of my big adventure…

I didn’t feel it bite or anything, but I know I caught the bug. Oh yes, that’s its name: the Travel Bug.  I caught it for sure. I climb on its back and it spreads its beautiful multicoloured wings. It takes me on many adventures. It carries me to places that once lived only in my dreams. To the vineyards of Champagne, the streets of Vancouver, the canals of Amsterdam. To the edge of Germany, to family trips in Vermont, to the bars of Calgary. It takes me to gritty Manchester, to the shops of London, and to farms in Massachusetts. It takes me to dip my toes in the Maritime waters, the top of the Eiffel Tower, to the candy playground of Las Vegas. We sail through the bright lights and the deep countryside. There is so much more to see…