Shoot, Ready, Aim

Bike Rides & Fighter Jets

My dad ran the operations for his company in Europe. The head honcho. The top banana. The man with a plan. He impressed me so much with the things he could do, I even made him Ruler of Earth in the sci-fi story I was writing for school.

Except... I can honestly say there was no plan for our bike rides, just an unfocused wandering on back roads that stitched together the patchwork of dutch farms surrounding our neighborhood. Unless you call getting lost a plan, we were footloose and fancy-free, discovering all kinds of things that don't show up on a map. An old crumbling cemetery, gypsies camping in the woods, and an army base hidden behind towering fences of barbed wire were some of the things we tripped across on a pleasant Sunday afternoon ride. 

But...having the dutch army base so close to the house explained a few things. Like the day my mom and I felt the house shake accompanied by a sound akin to one-ton iron skillets dragged across gravel. We raced outside, and lo and behold, it was precisely what you would never expect. A line of tanks rumbling around our neighborhood. I joked later that they were coming after dad and me for discovering their 'secret base'.

The dutch army was lost, turning left at the wrong cow patty and into a neighborhood that had only one way in... or out. If a tank could show embarrassment, they would have been bright red. I remember chuckling at the MP standing in the back of his jeep, windmilling his arms, and pointing at the exit like a kid urging his dad to drive faster, drive faster...

It's no wonder my next story, The Challenge, had so many military references in it. We were surrounded by them. Dad as ruler of earth? Check   Planet destroying lasers? Check  Stealing a fighter jet so I can save the world? Woah. Back up. What?

While we were busy living our lives in planes, trains, and automobiles, I was learning how to cope with it.

Maybe I was influenced by my grama, but I was afraid of flying. So, I did what any sensible person would do: put on cheapo headphones, press play on my Sony Walkman, and blast ELO's I'm Alive while pretending that I am the one flying the plane. I made sure to cue up the music to the perfect spot so that the climax would coincide with the push back in the seat as we lifted into the air...and suddenly I was soaring into space in a fighter jet on a mission to rescue earth and save my dad from a prison moon with no idea how to fly the plane... I crash-landed on a planet full of mazes...completely and utterly lost. Gee, maybe I should have added my bike to the story.

The plane rides weren't the only thing that made me sweat. 

I made it a habit of focusing on my homework instead of the death-defying car rides to school that exceeded 100 miles per hour. The company driver pushed the limits of that little Renault so far it tossed me about like a pinball. I thought I would die while being serenaded by Olivia Newton-John's  Have You Never Been Mellow.

It was no surprise, then, that I also included a gigantic pinball machine on an enemy planet in my forty-seven-page sci-fi story with slightly better, but still inept drawings. (I think my teacher sighed when I dropped my story on her desk, but couldn't hear her over the loud thump.) Thinking back, it was a challenge to write in that car. Well, that is, until I told my dad that I knew someone who drove faster than him. All of a sudden, Space Mountain turned into It's A Small World. The car rides to school took longer, but at least I'm not dead. 

Although...

 I did kill myself at the end of The Challenge. No risk, no reward! Go for the glory and all that brain-washy nonsense. I saved Earth but sacrificed myself. I don't think my teacher liked that very much--she wasn't used to one of her 12-year-old students blowing themselves up for an assignment.