On Seeing the Blue Angels Through a Grocery Store Window

The Blue Angels were appearing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't feel like going.  I'm not sure why.  My parents took Child 1.0.  I was happy he was getting to go, but a little upset with myself for not going.  I attended these regularly as a youth. I grew up on air force bases, and like all young boys growing up on air force bases I fully intended to be a fighter pilot.  Of course in reality, its very hard to get into the Air Force Academy, and that is more or less what is required.  So sooner or later, as John Mellencamp once stated, "those old crazy dreams just kinda came and went" .

So the fine Saturday afternoon my son was at the air show with my parents, I found myself in the grocery store picking up a couple of items for my brother-in-law's birthday dinner.  Its a newer store and has those windows that are eight feet off the ground so that you can't crash your car through them and steal tampons and cigarettes and other things its funny to picture people bothering to crash a car through a picture window to steal.  I looked through that window and the saw the Blue Angels fly by in formation.  It looked a lot like the picture here.  I found myself pointing at them, while nobody looked at what I was pointing at.  Although a few people just stared at me standing there pointing like an idiot.

At this moment, standing in Food Lion, pointing through the eight-foot-off-the-ground window like an idiot, I realized that every decision that led me to this point in my life had been wrong.  I don't want to do "this", I want to do "that".  And I don't think for a minute I ever for a minute wanted to join The Navy until that moment.

Naturally, I did the only sensible thing a 300 pound man looking down the barrel at 40 with a wife and two children can do when he realized he desperately wants to be a Navy fighter pilot.  I went home and watched Top Gun while I walked on the treadmill.  Seeing Top Gun in the theater when I was... 14 I think, was one of those kinda magical moments.  I've seen it several times through the years, but I hadn't watched the whole thing un-edited in a long time.  This particular watching it dawned on me, Top Gun sure has a lot of men that aren't dressed.  I'm not sure why this never occurred to me as a youth.  Maybe its because back then I wasn't ashamed to take my own shirt off.

Thanks to my buddy Chad for the picture.