True Story, True Story

(Picture a generic picture of a jet plane landing here; I couldn't get the "upload image" function to work.)

In the summer of 1989 I was on a flight returning to Cleveland from my one and only trip to California. Now I've been on planes since before I can remember, so flying's never bothered me much, except, God knows why, for a couple years in the late `80s. So I probably wasn't in the calmest of moods when, as we started our descent (yes, my seat tray was in its locked, upright position), we hit some very bad turbulence, probably the worst I've ever encountered (not counting an incident on the infield of the Kentucky Derby, 1992, involving a straw hat, one mint julep, and a $2 show bet on a horse named Jesuitical, but that's another story). I wasn't the only one freaking out, spitting out silent Hail Mary's like a machine gun and contemplating a marriage proposal to the passenger next to me--the whole plane was visibly wigging out. And then, at the instant the plane wheels hit the runway (I've never in my life used the word tarmac), but long before our safety was assured, a little girl, sitting a few rows ahead of me and across the aisle, next to her father and her equally little brother, yelled out gleefully, "At least we didn't die in the air, daddy!" The whole plane kind of let out a nervous laugh, knowing (as the plane jammed on its brakes and we kind of bounced around the tarm, er, runway) that we still might die on the ground but at least we'd go out with some dark laughter. Somehow the plane did manage to stop before running off the runway, and we all made it to the gate in one frazzled but still alive piece.

Nine or ten years later I'm telling this story to one of my classes (surely to help illuminate a Wallace Stevens' poem or as a metaphorical aid in explaining the complexities of deconstructionist theory) when one of my students practically leaps out her of chair and exclaims, "That was me!" No sweat, by then I was a veteran teacher and had learned to squelch my natural impulse to yell, "Bullshit!" and instead looked inquiringly at the student and instructed her to "explain what you mean a little more clearly for the benefit of the whole class." Well, bite my apple, if she didn't prove to me, herself, and the whole class that indeed she had been that little girl.

Now I'll really believe in the "Lattice of Coincidence" if that girl, now a young woman about the age I had been on that flight, happens to stumble on these ramblings tonight. Hope you're still laughing at the best times, Katie.

Joni Mitchell-This Flight Tonight

Dion-Katie Mae