"Husband Speak"

I've been married a long time. I've known my husband for 41 years and we've been married for nearly 36 of those years. We met when we were both dweeby high schoolers. Well, that's not entirely true. He wasn't dweeby, but I had a corner on the market. He was fun to be around, and he liked all of my friends, so we got to spend a lot of time together. It took a couple of years, but he finally wised up and decided it was time to actually date me. Smart man. Ok, so I had to rid myself of a boyfriend too, but when we finally figured it out, we didn't act impulsively. It wasn't until we had dated 4 years that we actually walked down the aisle. That was ok, because I was only 16 when he asked me out the first time. We both had some growing up to do.

At the young age of 6 years old, the hubs decided what he wanted to do with his life. That's not unusual. Most little boys and girls can finish the sentence that starts with "I want to be a ....." long before they turn 6. But he never changed his mind. I'm told that randomly at Christmas of that year, he turned to his parents and enthusiastically exclaimed "I want to be a jet pilot!!"

He started flying lessons at 14 and soloed an airplane before he got his drivers license. He went on to major in Aeronautical Technology Management in college, courtesy of a full ride scholarship from the Air Force, and started active duty shortly after graduating. He's made his living sitting in the front seat of one kind of airplane or another ever since; both military and civilian.

Over the years, as a result of sharing life with this man,  I've learned to like new things, live new places, and speak a new language. We've moved a lot over the years and he's traveled extensively while flying all different kinds of "equipment". He comes home with different stories all the time. As he tells them, terms and phrases come up that I need to be able to interpret to follow what he's saying, so my vocabulary continues to expand the longer we're married.

Here's a taste of what I hear, because I know you can't live without knowing the drivel that fills my mind. You're welcome.

1. Acronyms - by the thousands. AC, FO, SO, FE, IP, PIC, SIC, OPS, CO, DO, ADO, CP, ACP, BAQ, BOQ, JATO, FBO ........ The list will grow. Give me time.

2. Pilot Pellets - Peanuts. On occasion, we've called donuts by the same name.

3. Mallet-tize it - As in beat it with a mallet. He had to mallet-tize a fuel something or other with a rubber hammer in order to get out of Bangkok. I don't ask. I'm just glad he made it home.

4. Mountain Wave - Turbulence. I guess the air stirs up over mountains. I don't know. I just take his word for it.

5. Bag Drag - An Air Force term. Every time they hit the ground, they might go into crew rest, but the airplane kept flying with a new crew. So they had to drag all their bags from the plane to their lodging for the night. On long international USAF trips, there was a lot of shopping that went on too, so by the end of the "sortie" the bag drags were huge.

6. Crew Rest - When the crew rests. Duh.

7. Bags - What most people call "suitcases".

8. Sortie - See "Mission".

9. Mission - See "Sortie".

On one of our first dates, at 18 STINKING YEARS OF AGE, he took me in a 2 seater airplane from Fullerton, California to Catalina Island for lunch. They served buffalo burgers at the Catalina airport, which was a rare treat at the time. I was 16 and had never flown before. There was a boat race going on out of Long Beach that day, so he turned the plane on it's side so we could see the boats. With all the pressure on young men to come up with unique date ideas and marriage proposals, meet my better half. He would be pretty hard to beat.

10. "Make sure you fly with the Goodyears down" - Should be self explanatory. If you end up flying with your Goodyears up, another term comes into play, but I don't use that language.

11. Equipment - Airplanes. Ask a pilot what equipment he's on, and he immediately knows you're in the business.

12. "Let the big dog eat" - Keep your airspeed up.

13. "Keep the brick in the boat" - I don't know. It has to do with some instrument.

14. "Pin your ears back" "Light your hair on fire" - Go fast.

15. Go fast pants - G-suit. A pair of specialized pants worn by pilots that go fast and pull a lot of "G's". These pants keep the blood in their upper body so that they don't pass out. FYI, passing out at the controls of an airplane is not the preferred behavior for optimum performance.

16. M-1 maneuver - Facilitates the performance of go fast pants. It involves non-productive grunting. Want to stop reading now?

17. "Feel it by the seat of your pants" - Just fly it.

Is this like reading a text book? No worries. No pop quizzes.

18. "Arming handles raise, triggers squeeze." - Recited exactly that way, including the punctuation. In UPT, the student pilots had to memorize a list of behaviors necessary in the event of an emergency. I also memorized it from quizzing him over and over. This particular phrase had to do with punching out of an airplane. If we're at an event, and are ready to go home, all we have to do is look at each other, put up our thumbs and quickly jerk them a few inches into the air. It's then understood that we want to "punch out" or "depart the fix".(Go home)

19. UPT - Undergraduate Pilot Training

20. Punch out - The act of being propelled from the cockpit of an airplane by a small rocket under your seat. Always a last resort, understandably. The only time to leave a perfectly good airplane is when it's no longer perfectly good. Sorry to all you wannabe sky divers out there. What you consider recreation is just wrong.  

21. "Depart the fix" - "Leaving the final approach fix outbound". Whatever. Go somewhere else. See #18. Go home.

22. B-4 Bag - The large green bag (see #7) he carried in the military. He managed to pack for trips that consisted of several weeks, not just days, though he didn't own that many pairs of "undergarments".  I don't know if he ever did laundry. Honestly, I never asked. Some things are better left unsaid. Though our children DO know how to get 4 wears out of a single pair of undies before they're washed.

23. Boom Ride - When you fly so fast you cause a sonic boom (which happens when you break the sound barrier). Note: Boom rides cause pilots to smile.

24. "Sucks, blows, goes" - Explaining in 5 words or less how a jet engine functions.

25. The whites of their eyes. Something you never want to see in the cockpit of another airplane while inflight. It means you're entirely too close. Yes, he has, courtesy of inattentive flyers in other equipment (see #11). We don't talk about this either.

Are you getting an idea of what our conversations are like? I think I need to be done now. Except to tell you how to get away with graffiti. When the hubs was in college, he and some friends painted correctly named runways on the sidewalks of the Aero Tech quad. They used to go up to the second floor and shoot paper airplanes out the windows to see if they could achieve a correct approach and "stick it" in the middle of the runway. The university never asked who did it, and in fact still maintains the original work.

Pilots are nothing more than children with very expensive toys. We wouldn't have them any other way.

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:

The Lord make His face to shine upon thee,

and be gracious unto thee.

Numbers 6:23-25

Lord guard and guide the men who fly

Through the great spaces of the sky;

Be with them traversing the air

In darkening storms or sunshine fair.

Thou Who dost keep with tender might

The balanced birds in all their flight,

Thou of the tempered winds, be near,

That, having thee, they know no fear.

Aloft in solitudes of space,

Uphold them with thy saving grace.

O God, protect the men who fly

Thro' lonely ways beneath the sky.

Amen

Mary C. D. Hamilton

1915