Come Fly with Me, Hypothetically
I don’t prefer to write about gender stuff because it’s almost always trite and boring. I’m going to have to lay the blame for this story at Mrs. Russo’s feet.
I’d been at a work meeting for three days. I wasn’t grumpy, but I was exhausted, having spent the week in New Jersey for work. I genuinely forgot what it was like to get up and commute every day. I guess there’s no need to tell you it’s a pretty joyless experience.
I didn’t understand her question at first, I’d stopped to bring home Chinese food and was struggling to steady the bag on the front seat and had to get her to ask it again.
“Could you land a commercial airplane?” she reiterated.
When I first started as a reporter, I took a flying lesson. It was part of a promotion to get more people to learn to fly. I headed out to the Ocean City Airport, a private airfield, to meet Andy Sorrell, flight instructor. Andy was in his 70s and had flown in the Pacific in WWII. He was bright and flint-eyed, a slight, wiry guy and not just for his age. I said at the time that if the Japanese couldn’t bring him down, there probably wasn’t much I could do to screw up. As long as Andy didn’t have a heart attack or anything, we’d be fine.
As a bulky guy, I’ve tried to cultivate a little grace and self-awareness when sharing tiny spaces with normal-sized strangers. “Tiny” didn’t really get at the Cessna experience. Wearing a winter coat against the December cold (we flew on Pearl Harbor Day) increased my general mass and added a sense of not claustrophobia, but, let’s say, constraint, very much like the 1980s Fiat I’d learned to drive stick on.
Andy showed me the throttle, told me we’d be going about 60 mph when we took off (which seemed a sluggish pace at which to take on gravity) and then we were rolling along the runway, taking off into the wind as we pushed up and out over the ocean.
I remember the sensation of pulling back on the controls and leaving the ground. Andy kept his hands on his stick to guide me (and protect us all) but I made a successful takeoff.
We tooled around in his Cessna for half an hour or so. He kept us over the ocean, explaining that it was safer for all involved if we didn’t have the ground to worry about, but I got to buzz along the coast; we got great photos. As we were returning to land, Andy took the controls.
Landing was a little more complex. I remember noticing the ground littered with shells (a seaside runway is a seagull’s delight) but I don’t remember whether he said to land into the wind or with it. Or if he said anything at all.
Taking off into the wind makes sense, but my limited knowledge of aerodynamics prevents me from even guessing whether the reverse is true. Since Andy didn’t really trust me landing a plane with a top speed of 80 mph? maybe?, the procedure didn’t really stick.
I haven’t flown a plane in the 20ish ensuing years.
“I guess,” I told my wife. “Why?”
She told me there was this online thing going around where women were asking their boyfriends/husbands whether they could land a commercial airliner, and all the men said they could. I suppose it proved that we’re all know-it-all boobs. Maybe it does, as if it needed proving, but I was a little hurt at the insinuation. If we’re going to do the whole men v. women thing, I feel like the question was intentionally malformed.
“You didn’t ask me whether I could pass flight school. You asked if I could land a commercial airplane,” I told her. “Under what circumstances would I be called upon to do that?”
No matter your gender or your supposed cultural state of know-it-all-ness, imagine being asked to land a commercial plane. If someone came on the loudspeaker, Airplane! style and said, “Does anyone know how to fly a plane?” I’d freak out with everyone else.
If a woman stepped forward and said, “Well, I took two classes with a WWII pilot and kind of remember how to land,” I wouldn’t deny her the opportunity. Christ, if anyone at all stepped up and said they played a lot of Flight Simulator they would clearly be the most qualified to land the plane.
But the question wasn’t about whether I felt qualified, the question was whether I could.
If for reasons too convoluted to make sense anywhere but a Cosmo Internet Quiz, if it fell to me to land a commercial airliner, I’d absolutely give it a whack rather than sit and cry into my knees. I’d have to assume I’d be successful. There’s no alternative.
The difference between me and whomever constructed this question is that I’ve seen movies and TV shows where this very thing happens. It’s practically a sitcom premise. As far as I understand it, there’s a guy in the tower who will tell you what to do. You just have to listen and not panic. I’m pretty good at both.
I know that it’s complicated as hell to land a plane. Certainly, it’s easier to roll over and die in the face of disaster, but I believe in my soul I’m not that guy. I’ve been lots of awful things but never a coward or quitter.
And this is where the boring gender stuff starts. The question didn’t matter. There is not one woman who asked it who didn’t know whether their partner was qualified on a Boeing 737. There is not one man who answered that question who truly believed he could saunter into the cockpit, tap the captain on the shoulder and say, “I’ll take it from here, sport.”
Instead, the guys all thought, “Well, if they’re asking me to land the plane, there must be no one even remotely qualified.”
From the “guy” perspective, if you ask me if I can do something we all know I can’t do, there must be some special context.
From the “girl” perspective, a partner’s response to improbable hypotheticals says more about the partner than his direct answers to direct questions ever could.
Keep the Faith,
Tony
Postscript
I wrote this right before boarding a flight to Salt Lake City. Actually, as you’re reading this I’m in Pullman, Washington, visiting my daughter. Or maybe I’m an international celebrity because I single-handedly landed the plane in an emergency. Only time will tell.
I’ve had to kill the last two stories I wrote for you because they were too angry. Like, relentlessly mean. It’s interesting because I don’t know if anyone except me can tell the difference, but when I’m joyfully, gleefully mean the words flow differently than when I’m essentially venting on the page. When I do that, I bore even myself.
I’ll keep tinkering to see if I can make them a less vicious screed, because I want to talk about the seething cultural anger I can sense out there. Last week I got an “in.”
I’m not just glad those people all were killed in that submarine, I’m taking part in a worldwide satisfaction about the suffering of the ultra-rich that feels very guillotine-y. There’s a creeping pitilessness in my gut that feels justified, and that can’t be good.
I can’t remember whether I told you, but I’m the new president of the local chapter of the Maryland Writers Association. I’m excited to try and build something different from what’s already available in the area.
Finally, I’d like to plug my “Subscription” section. I’ve been publishing “Being Burley” a story about the rise of Burley Oak beer from humble beginnings. I’m releasing between 1,500 and 2,000-ish words per week. I need to shout out Walter Curran, again, for pinging me when he catches a typo.
So far I’ve gotten a good response and, honestly, the book it a lot better than I remember, I may even self-publish it in the spring. Stay Tuned.
TR