"A few baseball cards, a sack of marbles...(Petey)."

I don’t like driving alone, Some say. And Some bring emaciated dograts on airplanes.

(Some also need the lullaby glow of a television to sleep, which is likely wasting pixels on a tribute to codependency like The Bachelor.)

In opposition, I really like traveling solo.

In a car, I can revisit puberty singing Circa Survive, scratch my man bits with vigor, cloud the cabin with noxious fumes, and dig for nasal gold at will (everyone does).

I have only one bladder to worry about (cruising through barren Kansas, an empty bottle suffices), and more importantly, I’m not obliged to entertain. It’s just internal dialogue.

Your gas is fucking horrid, Ryan.

No doubt, Ryan.

But maybe that’s the crux of the “you versus a few” polarization. I suspect people either like talking to themselves (not necessarily about flatulence) or they don’t.

The new century has yielded ADHD lifestyles. The increasing demands of jobs, school and all things extracurricular – laced with the hyper-connectedness of technology – leave us breathless. We sacrifice things as a result: skip the newspaper, jog tomorrow, call the family next week. Hell, I’ve shrugged off brushing my teeth to save three minutes of sleep.

And that's just the secondary bullshit. There's nary a moment to drop gears and survey the core.

And that’s exactly why highway (or skyway, what have you) solitude is crucial. Ostensibly, it can appear as simply an obstruction to the destination, but the trek is pleasantly amorphous; you can sculpt the Play-Doh as you wish.

Take a fine-tooth comb to your life. Analyze friendships or a relationship: what’s evolving and what’s stale? Gauge your enthusiasm for your academic major or career: what will put the fire back under your ass? Refine your social affairs to save some cash: should the waitresses at Southern X-posure really know your name? The gamut of thoughts is infinite.

The non-solo gang avoids the brakes for that very reason: it showcases vulnerability. We tend to be our worst critics, and in our age of likeability, criticism – even of our own design – can’t be considered constructive, enlightening. What’s unveiled can be too unnerving.

And I’m not immune to this, either. A bizarre twist (with curious hints) in my recent trip to Denver sparked a thought I tried my damnedest to deny. I’ve since been caught up in its implications.

My flight from Raleigh-Durham International wasn't direct, so I stopped in Newark, New Jersey.

On the way, I finished reading Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas. The centerpiece of the final rambling essay was an insane occasion when Klosterman drove through rural Ohio and a woman demolished the car hood having inexplicably fallen from the sky. Her heavenly origins were never discovered.

As I strolled to the connecting gate, an overhead intercom message directed medics to another arriving flight for a passenger emergency.

That sucks, I mumbled, and immediately forgot it.

I got bitch seat on the next flight. And arm rest etiquette is never universal (or existent when Tubs overflows into your bubble). I mostly sat with T-rex arms glued to my sides.

Not 45 minutes into surfing the clouds, the tides turned.

I glanced up from my iPod daze to see a flight attendant five rows ahead bullying an older female passenger’s arm.

Ma’am … Ma’am!

Unresponsive.

The crew was on their game. They cleared several rows before awkwardly maneuvering the woman into the central aisle.

Then the cinema moment:

Is anyone on the plane a doctor?!

You could have heard a piss stream from the lavatory. Only the subtle whir of the engines spoke; roughly 150 people and no stethoscope.

We spent almost an hour backtracking to Philly, circling for an emergency landing. Three flight attendants rotated CPR to what appeared to be no avail. Their head shakes and shimmering brow sweat hinted at the prognosis.

On the ground, several EMTs boarded. After some preliminary measures, two of them carried her out like a shifting sandbag. That was the only time I saw the woman’s face: blue. Gatorade Glacier Freeze blue.

Overhead, the captain relayed the last we heard of her.

The woman who needed medical attention … she’s not doing too well, folks.

I’ve formed my conclusion.

It was pretty surreal. But what’s more crazy is how grossly unaffected I was by the event. A woman died 10 feet from me. Meh. In fact, I got what I wanted.

I hope she dies was my very first thought.

I guess my doppelganger is a jerkoff. I slapped my wrist but eventually inquired Why? I realized my desire was not as twisted as it sounded.

I don’t have some perverse death obsession – I wasn’t Mr. Burns finger tapping in anticipation of X-eyes. I’m not socially selfish, either, desperate for the next slack jaw party story.

Rather, I need to be devastated.

The Reaper’s fickleness eludes me.

When my mother was 14, her mother died from cancer. I watched one of my first college crushes roly-poly when her dad lost to the same foe. Currently, a good friend has a front row seat to her father’s degradation.

A second cousin of mine once wandered a long bridge when a train whistle sent her running – just not fast enough.

The nearly three dozen mowed down at Virginia Tech was an absolute massacre, horrific to those linked to the victims.

But I’ve never had to sprinkle dirt on immediate family. None of my buddies took bullets.

I’m capable of compassion, mind you. I recognize a flatline’s impact on others; I can say I’m sorry and mean it. But I’m personally desensitized. Tragedy just hasn’t been truly palpable in my life, and I’m naive as a result.

It’s like I’d need to take a micro look at the mutated cells devouring tissue; retrace the fall’s arc as I loom over the mangled body; tie the tourniquet around a screaming wound.

Only then might mortality have a face.

On Continental 228, I wasn’t counting compressions, feeling ribs splinter under my palm. I wasn’t pinching an Arctic nose, sending Sahara air into listless lungs.

Jane Doe was just a seat to me. 10F died – or was it 11?

Four days later, I summited the merciless Fairchild Mountain ahead of my dad and brother. I peered back down the nearly 40-degree slope as they climbed.

What if they slipped…?