I always wanted to be a pilot.
My mom says even before I could talk, I’d point to airplanes in the sky and go “Rrrrrrrrrrrr.” I think I was probably just filling my diaper, but the pointing part does sound cute.
For my sixth or seventh birthday, my dad bought me a model airplane — a WWII-era P-51 Mustang. At first I was a little disappointed I had to assemble it before I could play with it, but then I fell in love with it. I worked hard to glue all those little pieces together. When my mom first saw my finished work, she said something like, “That’s nice, dear, but why did you put wings on that nice little car?” My mom didn’t know much about airplanes.
High hopes for flying airplanes
We didn’t have much money in those days; I don’t think I got another model for a few years. That didn’t matter — I loved that Mustang so much. I’d take it apart, then put it back together again and again. It was messy. I’d use some of mom’s nail polish remover and a good sharp knife to get rid of most of the old glue and paint, then reapply it. I must say, my room smelled like a refinery sometimes. I remember getting sick a lot.
When I got older, I started to think about joining the Air Force and going to flight school. I even went to the recruiting office in the next town and filled out a bunch of forms. All I had to do was pass a physical, and then it would be off to the “wild blue yonder.”
High hopes for fixing airplanes
I never got past that physical. The flight surgeon told me I had a problem with “spatial orientation.” The way he explained it, some people have difficulty knowing right from left, but my problem was judging height — sort of like a vertical dyslexia. Not the kind of issue you want pilots to have. I forget the name of the disease; the doc said it was pretty rare.
The recruiter said I could still join if I wanted to. He said the Air Force needs plenty of people besides pilots; specifically, they need people to bring chow to pilots when they don’t feel like getting it themselves. They sure took good care of those flyboys. I said no thanks.
My dad knew how disappointed I was. He said if I couldn’t fly airplanes, maybe I could at least learn to fix them. He offered to pay for an airplane mechanic course at the local community college.
At first I wasn’t interested. I still wanted to earn my wings. I thought maybe I could do that as a civilian, but even the commercial airlines were uneasy about hiring pilots who couldn’t tell up from down. That airplane mechanic program started to sound better and better. I thanked my dad and signed up.
Hopes less high
On the first day of school I went looking for my morning class – Airframe & Powerplant, the basics for airplane mechanics. I remember the hallways didn’t have real good signage – just some hand-lettered cards posted outside each classroom. I saw one labeled “A&P” and walked in. I was a little surprised to see as many as 40 or 50 students there, about half of them female. It never occurred to me so many young women wanted to fix airplanes. I sat down and waited for class to begin.
Right away I could tell something was wrong. For starters, the professor didn’t look like a mechanic. He was wearing a long white coat with a tie, and kept talking about his patience. At first I thought he was a little too full of himself — going on and on about having lots of patience. Hey, you’re not the only one, I felt like telling him. But then it became clear his kind of “patience” ended with ts instead of ce. Just as I was trying to figure out why they’d hire some doctor to teach us about turbines, he wrote the name of our textbook on the blackboard. It was “A&P” all right — Anatomy & Physiology!
Hope I don’t mess up?
Now it all made sense – why he was a doctor, why there were so many women in the class, and why they weren’t wearing overalls. I was too embarrassed to admit my mistake, so I just sat there. I figured the class would break sooner or later; then I’d sneak over to the right room. But then a funny thing happened: I liked what I was hearing.
When the doctor started talking about the human body, it kind of made sense to me in an aviation sort of way. For example, airplanes run on fuel; if they don’t have enough fuel, they fall out of the sky. People run on fuel, too – food. If they don’t eat enough, they fall down, or maybe just find it harder to stand up (i.e. “take off”).
Bones and muscles were sort of like cables and spars. Arms were like wings, and legs were like landing gear. Eyes were like radar. Ears were like radios. Noses were like … noses. Take good care of all of those parts, and the airplane or person works just fine.
I stayed for that class, then switched my major from Aviation to EMS. I figured I wouldn’t have to buy as many tools, and I wouldn’t have to look for that Airframe & Powerplant class.
The rest, as they say, is history. I became an EMT and later a paramedic. I found I liked helping people – at times. The trick was keeping things simple; no reason to use a monkey wrench when a pair of pliers would do.
I’ll be back from time to time to share stories about me and EMS. Meanwhile, take it low and slow.
