Blogging A-Z: F Is for Flying

            I first flew in a plane when I was 19, in 1961. I was going to my second Antioch College co-op job, in Los Angeles. In those days, there was something called “student standby”: if you had a student ID, you could show up at the airport two hours before a scheduled takeoff, and if there was a seat available, you got it for some discount. (This was before deregulation, and flights routinely had empty seats.)

            I was at the airport before 6 a.m. and got on an 8 a.m. flight. Not a particularly adventurous person, I expected to be nervous: inside this metal cannister, tens of thousands of feet in the air. But once inside the plane, buckled into my seat, and staring out the window at puffy clouds and the green and brown earth below, I felt serenely safe. The flight was smooth, and I couldn’t help feeling that my jet was attached by a firm pole to a truck on a highway below. Of course I knew this wasn’t true, but it felt like it could be true. I’ve loved flying ever since, especially that moment when the airplane that’s been lumbering along the runway gracefully lifts off and the ground falls away.

            Jack took his first plane ride, with me, a few years after this. We were on a shuttle flight to Boston before switching to a tiny DC-3 to Montpelier, Vermont. Jack thought he would be nervous, and he was very nervous. He had to have a drink before we boarded, and another as soon as the refreshments were wheeled around. After a few more flights with Jack, his nervousness became contagious; I tried not to be as nervous as he was, but it was hard.

            As the years went by, Jack became somewhat less nervous, but I found it easier to fly without him.

            He did come up with one of his classic teases on a flight to his home in Kansas with our daughter when she was about eight. Looking down at all the lights as we flew over Cleveland, Jack said, “ Look down there. It’s a light-bulb farm.” Christie glanced out the window, gave him a quizzical look, and replied, “That’s just another one of your lies.”

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April’s writing challenge is to blog every day, with each post beginning with a letter of the alphabet from beginning to end. We skip Sundays, except for April 1, so as to have 26 days in the month.

Slice of Life Tuesday

Do Men Have a Better Sense of Humor, 
or Just a Weirder One?

            Recently my husband and I were discussing what makes something funny, and whether something being funny could ever be offensive. He thought that if something was truly funny, it couldn’t be offensive, and someone who thought it wasn’t funny had no sense of humor. I thought that it always depended on where one was in relation to the object of the joke.

            Came a case study today. My husband tells me the following joke someone told him once.

            Mickey Mantle takes his teammates Whitey Ford and Billy Martin hunting in his home state of Oklahoma. Mickey thinks the best hunting will be on his friend’s land, so they go to the friend’s house, where Mickey says he should go in and ask  permission, as a courtesy, since he knows the friend will say yes, while Whitey and Billy stay outside.

            Mickey and his friend exchange greetings, and the friend says that of course they can hunt on his property. But Mickey could do him a favor. The friend’s favorite horse is old and sick, and really should be put down, but he just doesn’t have the heart to shoot him himself. Could Mickey shoot the horse for him? Of course, Mickey says.

            When he joins Whitey and Billy, however, he decides to play a little joke on them. “That son of a bitch,” he reports, “he won’t let us hunt here. I don’t know why he’s being such a shit. I’ve got to get even with him.”

            He points to the old horse in the paddock next to the house. “That’s his favorite horse. I’ve got a good mind to shoot him.”

            “Don’t do that,” Whitey says. “We can go hunt somewhere else.”

            “No,” Mickey insists. “I’m going to shoot his horse.” And while he and Whitey continue to argue over whether Mickey will shoot the horse, they hear gunshots. Billy is shooting the friend’s cattle.

            I grimaced. How stupid, I thought. Yet my husband was laughing. “Of course,” I said, “that is only funny if you think men are really stupid.” Yes, my husband said, still chuckling.

            “And what’s really crazy,” I continued, “is that men tell this joke about each other, and they think it’s funny!” My husband laughed even more, since apparently what I’d said was really funny