The Almost Ultimate Screw up

The Almost Ultimate Screw-Up
      “Angelo, I’ll get the inside, you get the outside”, I yelled as we jaunted out to the S-2/A aircraft we would use for today’s training. Getting the inside and outside simply meant who would preflight the inside versus the outside. I would fly first so I would do the inside which included going out of an overhead hatch to check the top of the aircraft, going back down through the hatch to the inside of the aircraft, closing the hatch and pre-flighting the cockpit area, etc. I was in a hurry today. I was feeling particularly good.
     As I walked out on the wing looking for any screw that might be out of place or loose gas caps, my head was full of thoughts about how I got to this point. College, AOCS, (Aviation Officer Candidate School), and two years of flight training. All of it came to this: Angelo and I were headed out to a small airport, along with six other aircraft to practice landing on an aircraft carriers. Cool!
     By the way, this training was taking place in Corpus Christie, Texas. I must say, there was not a lot to do down in, “CC”, except drink Long Neck beers, dance the Texas Two Step, look at the sage and enjoy a lot of particularly good flying weather.
     “Hay, Timmo, you about done?”, Angelo yelled, bringing me back to earth. I finished my pre-flight, popped down through the hatch and plopped my butt into the left seat. Damn, I felt good.
     Angelo was not doing well in training. I was number one in the class. They put us together so, ostensibly, Angelo could learn from me. He was a great guy. I was full of myself.
     The taxi and takeoff were normal. Taxi and takeoffs were always normal, unless you lose an engine and end up landing in Corpus Christie Bay, like a friend of mine did. He recovered. Ended up flying for United, of all things.
     “Timmo, twenty miles from the field. You want to start down?”, Angelo shouted over the roar of the engines located on each wing, about five feet away from where we were sitting.
     “Naw”, I said, cockily. “In a minute”. I did this just to remind Angelo who was the shit hot pilot here. “OK, get clearance for lower”, I directed. I think I saw Angelo roll his eyes at my attitude, but I’m not sure. He had a habit of rolling his eyes when he spotted bullshit.
      As we descended I made up my mind that this approach and landing was going to set records for shit-hot-ness, so I pushed the power levers full forward and red lined the airspeed indicator. For a moment, my thoughts went to a guy in a class ahead of me who did something similar. In his case, though, the engine quit when he made a turn and sadly, he plummeted to the ground. As my airspeed increased on the descent, I wondered if he had been red lining as well.
      I crossed over the runway numbers, the numbers on the first part of the runway, not the end, as is usually done, and broke hard left. The aircraft responded beautifully as I turned it up on its left wingtip, almost like a tether ball wrapping itself around a pole. I was looking straight down through my side window at the Texas sage, eight hundred feet below. Really moving now, I needed to bleed off some airspeed. Angelo was right there for me. “Gear down, flaps full, hook down”, (The hook was simulated. It would be used at the carrier later in training.), I shouted. Angelo reacted perfectly.
     As the aircraft slowed, I came out of my turn and rolled out directly on center line, on airspeed. “Balls On”, I thought to myself. I worked the power levers expertly, descending at a perfect rate.
     “Call the ball”, the LSO, (Landing Signal Officer), ordered. He was on the ground, calling the shots, mike in hand, from that point until we touched down.
     “Roger Ball, fuel state 5 point 2”, I answered, confidently. The pass was perfect. I touched down, feeling like superman.
     Angelo turned over to me, “Man, I wish I were you right now. That was perfect!”. I smiled.
     I slowly taxied the plane to the end of the runway, reveling in my greatness. We were about half way down the runway when a call over our headsets. It was a call that sent my heart into my throat, started my life flashing before my eyes and brought my aviation career to a temporary full stop.
     “You left the overhead hatch open”, the LSO said with as many words. LSO’s were like that. Few words, a lot said. Immediately I turned my head around to look. The overhead hatch door, the one I was supposed to close, was wide open, the noise attenuating stuffing torn to shreds, flopping in the wind. Had that door come off in flight we would have both been killed. No doubt.
     “Who's in the left seat?”, the LSO asked. (Remember, the guy flying did the overhead pre-flight and was responsible for the hatch.) I was sweating like a stuck pig. Before I answered I turned to Angelo who was looking straight ahead. “Still want to be me?”, I asked.
     He continued looking straight ahead saying, “Nope”. Between Angelo and I, it was I getting the lesson, not he.
     “Sir, Ensign M. is in the left seat”, I responded, sheepishly.
     “Park the plane, report to me”, the LSO directed.
     “Yes sir”, I answered as I took a little power off, taxiing even slower.
     The LSO reminded me of my abject stupidity in a two hour sit down, (I didn't sit.), that day and he did so in no uncertain terms. But, I finished training on time and, as it turns out, Angelo and I both went on to complete our carrier landings aboard the USS Lexington.
     This was one my worst flying days ever but it was also one of my best. I learned the cliché, “Haste Makes Waste”, is an absolute. I also learned that being an over bearing, thinks he’s the ace-of-the-base, full of bullshit young Ensign aviator in the United States Navy may not get you one thing and may just get you another.
     It may not get you that occasional free beer at the Officer’s Club because no one wants to continuously hear how great you are.
     And, it may just get you killed. I was lucky.

     Speaking of beers, I recall I bought all the beer at the Officer’s club that night. It seems in the Viet Nam era, taking money out of a young ensign’s pocket to buy someone else's beer was one of the most effective teaching methods available.

The Talk

                                                                                                                     

THE TALK

I paced around my home office, unsettled, fidgety as I tried to figure what the hell just happened. My wife, soon to be ex-wife had obtained a restraining order against me. I had no idea why, nor did she when I asked her. “My lawyer told me to do it,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes.
“My God”, I thought. “What has happened?” “What the hell IS happening?”
I needed someone to blame for my life spinning out of control. It can’t be my fault. It just can’t be. If it is not my fault, then whose could it be? In what seemed to be a moment of desperation, I came up with the idea that it was my parents, mostly my father’s, fault. All their parenting mistakes were coming to back to haunt me.
I had to think.
It was funny. I used to talk with my father quite often. Each time I headed out on a trip, I would call him. "Hay Pop, what’s up?" I would ask. "Hi son. Where to today?" he queried. "The usual places, Dad", I replied, casually. I had business in the Orient quite often and each time I knew I was headed that way I would tell him and he would take the opportunity to revisit his days as a young sailor in the Pacific during WWII. He loved that I would go to Saipan or Taiwan, places he’d been stationed.
Fact is, my dad didn't talk much about WWII or about his days in the Navy until he was in his seventies. As he aged he seemed to gain a greater appreciation for what he had done and the things he had seen. When he talked about his days on board his Navy destroyer he spoke as if he were standing there, on the ship, carrying out the duties of a young sailor. You could tell these were days he loved to remember. The phone call would usually end with, “I love you, Pops,” and I would be on my way.
Today, I needed a much more serious talk with my dad. And I was determined that it be now!
I called him around eight AM on a Sunday morning. “Dad, can I come up?”, I asked. “Of course, you can. Your mother and I are just hanging around the house, he replied. I think he could tell there was an urgency in my voice that was not normally there.
Good. I was going to go to my dad and say what i had wanted to say for years. But first, to get to their house I had to deal with some of the worst traffic in the country. I figured I had about a four and half-hour window with which to get to his house, have “The Talk”, with him and return before I find myself stuck in traffic for hours. “The Talk”, would have to be short and to the point. I had to get going.
In my car, sitting in the very traffic I was trying so hard to avoid, I crawled along at a snail’s pace. My thoughts went to what I was going to say. My dad had always been a kind and generous man but he could be formidable. Confronting him, as I intended to do today, was not going to be easy. What, exactly was I going to say? As traffic picked up speed, I started to consider where I was going with all of this.
I was in the middle of a divorce. No, it was not the nasty, mean divorce we all read about. It was painful, but not mean. There were children. I struggled mightily with how I could possibly have come to this point and I was angry, unable to come to grips with the idea that I might be the one responsible for the mess I was in. “Hell”, I thought, “I am a good man, a good father. This cannot be my fault. It has to be the handicaps I have been forced to live with, the result of parent’s mistakes made many years ago”.
As I drove along, my responses to the cars around me was purely instinctive. I was buried in thought. I was driving safely, but just barely. Traffic was almost at a standstill.
Why was I going to see him? Was it to get answers? To a degree, I suppose. Why was I really going? To blame he and my mother for the train wreck that had become my life. That was the real story here. “There, I said it”, I thought. “It’s their goddamn fault”.
“Now”, I thought, “this was going to be easy”. My parents had made any number of mistakes in our upbringing that were easily identifiable, giving me the fodder I needed to make my point. I could blame my entire, screwed up life on their drinking, the fights between them when we were kids and the dumb shit stuff they would do while under the influence of alcohol. This talk was getting easier to imagine. Even the traffic was improving.
When I arrived, I checked my watch. “Jeezus”, I thought, I was way behind, traffic wise. I had a half-hour to get this talk behind me before traffic, again, became my number one priority. “God, I hate driving in this city”, I thought as I got out of my car.
Suddenly, my stomach ached. I was scared shitless.
As I entered their luxurious double wide mobile home, my parents were sitting in two overstuffed, leather recliners watching a rerun of “Jeopardy” on television. “What is Metaphysics!”, my dad half shouted at the TV in answer to a question I didn’t hear. He was always good at that game. My mother smiled.
“Hi, son”, he said as I walked over to each of them, hugging.
I had to get to the point. Traffic.
“Dad, could you shut the TV off for a few minutes”, I asked. He grabbed the remote, aimed it at the television and in less than a minute the room was quiet.
I sat down on a sofa that was across from them, not leaning back but sitting on the edge. The fact that I did this was not lost on my dad. He and my mother could tell something was wrong.
"Dad, I have to ask you some questions about things that went on while we were young. Do you mind”? “Shoot, son,” he responded, wondering what was going on. I thought, “Here goes nothing”.
“Why did you and mom drink so much and why did you fight so often?", I started. "Why did we move every year and never have any money and why did you make my oldest brother go to the Catholic seminary when he was 14?". I had a lot of questions, so many I could hardly get them out in a coherent fashion. I stopped there to give them time to answer. This was not easy. In fact, it was a lot harder than I imagined. My parents, taken aback for a moment, recovered nicely. My dad spoke, quietly, gently. "Son, your Mother and I did the best we could while raising you kids. No, we didn't get it right all the time but things were different back then. Harder in many ways.”
As he spoke, distracted for a moment, I took quick glance at the small round wall clock in the kitchen. Traffic. Always in my head.
He went on. “When we moved, we moved with the notion that it would be an improvement to our lives. It didn’t always work out that way. As far as the drinking was concerned, we did let that get out of control from time to time. You may see that as a gross understatement and I would probably agree with you if I were looking at it from where you are. We admit, we messed up on that score. For now, let’s leave it at that.
As far as your brother going to the Seminary is concerned, it may be hard for you to remember but we scraped and saved and borrowed against our home to send him to that seminary. All the other kids sacrificed to send him there, you just didn't know it. Your Grandmother was a big factor in sending him off at such a young age as well. We allowed ourselves to go along with her desires to have a priest in the family. I can’t say we regret it but I can say it was not our best decision”.
My mother fidgeted in her chair as my dad explained. My father was not getting angry at all as he answered my questions. He was calm and talked with love and understanding. This is not at all what I expected.
He continued. "Don't you remember all the time you and I spent together when you were little. I would always take you with me on Saturdays to do our construction jobs. Remember all the time with just you and I, you helping me by line up all the parts that I would use as I worked. Why, you knew what I needed before I knew what I needed? I loved having you with me".
Another quick look at the time. Traffic. Shit!
As my dad spoke, I started to see that I had been mistaken about a lot of things. He went on to say, "Son, we did the best we could with all six of you kids. If your life is a mess it is not my fault". My dad wasn't angry. He said it with love. But then…
It struck like a bolt of lightning.
“What did you say?”, I yelled.
“What did you say?” I yelled again, standing. Both parents were startled, my mother reaching over to hold my father’s hand.
“It is not YOUR fault MY life had spun out of control? The hell it isn’t. The drinking, the fights, the changing schools. It messed me up. It messed us all up”. I shouted. “How can you say that its not your fault, dad? Look at my life. It’s a train wreck”. My dad remained calm, although he was holding my mother’s hand tightly.
I took one more look at the clock on the wall. “The hell with traffic!”, I thought. I was pissed. After a minute or so I sat, head down, thinking.
Then the second bolt of lightning hit.
My God, he’s right!
It wasn't his fault! It was I who managed to screw things up so badly. Not my parents nor anyone else. Me.
My dad didn’t need to put into words what I know he was thinking. That I was a grown man. Act like it. Stand up, take responsibility. In fact, my dad did not need to say another word.
"If your life is a mess it is not my fault". It was that simple.
The conversation ended with hugs and “I love you”. I drove away, deep in thought as my parents went back to their Jeopardy game.
"It was not my fault,” my father had said. As traffic built, creating a backup for miles, I sat behind the wheel, thinking. He was right. My life has been mine to control, or not control for many years. I was a grown man and I was defined by the choices I made. Not by my parent’s choices.
That was a remarkable day in my life. I had confronted my dad and mother with a blast furnace of issues bent on having them explain to me just how they could have screwed my life up so badly. They met the onslaught with calm and empathy. That surprised me. And it allowed me to consider the world in much more simple terms. Terms that now made perfect sense to me.
We are the choices we make. Blaming our parents for the lives we have is only good for so long. We take the tools that they give us, some good, some not so good and we build on them. What we build, well, that is up to us.
I learned a lot that day. It changed my life.
It truly changed my life.
I learned another important lesson that day. Allowing my world to be controlled by the ebb and flow of a bunch of cars on a freeway is about the dumbest damn thing I have ever heard of.