Due to his time travels, Billy Pilgrim already knows that the plane he chartered to a convention in Montreal will crash and that everyone except himself and the copilot will perish. Therefore, minutes before the plane was to meet its demise, Billy Pilgrim "closed his eyes, traveled in time back to 1944" (156). Since my summer has been mainly consumed with summer work and Friends reruns, I thought of an episode that I had recently watched. In this episode, Phoebe tells Chandler to go to his happy place after breaking up with his girlfriend. I couldn't help but relate Billy Pilgrim to Phoebe's advice because he unknowingly followed it. Often, people block out bad memories or current inopportune situations by thinking "happy thoughts". This is a defense mechanism that can be used to focus on good memories rather than unfortunate occurances. Billy Pilgrim employs this coping method in order to escape the grim reality of the plane crash.
This episode of Friends is one of the few episodes I've ever seen, and I didn't think of this connection. Now that you mention it, I am reminded of several times when Billy is in the woods with the scouts and Weary when he just sits, smiles, and travels to a different point in time. He goes to his "happy place" a lot, but I never really thought of it as a coping mechanism.
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