"Husband Speak" The Sequel

English is my first language. But we've moved a lot, and the more we move, the more I realize that there are "dialects" within the English language that vary from state to state and from profession to profession. Both of my son in laws often throw terms around that completely baffle me. When they use turns of phrase directly related to their educations and fields of expertise, I just stay quiet or change the subject so as not to reveal my stupidity. Up until now, I probably had them fooled. If they read this, I'll have to find another way to avoid responding. But my better half knows my limitations intimately, so I can honestly and without restraint let my ignorance shine. It's quite freeing, actually. There are very few questions I can't ask him, and often interrupt him mid-sentence with the question "what does that mean?" so that I can continue to unravel the dialect of "Husband Speak".  

The husband is a career pilot, having flown nearly 20,000 hours in 12 different jets, and countless propeller driven equipment. Some of the terms he uses are aviation wide. Others are specific to either civilian or military aviation. And even within the civilian theater, some terms are specific to either Airline or General aviation. And within General aviation, there's an even further breakdown. So it gets complicated. And confusing. But if you've landed here voluntarily, you should be used to my confusion. Welcome to my world. If you could only see inside my head..................

1.  More Acronymns. The list is endless - NQC, SMR, ATC, NJI/NJA, FRED, BUFF, SOS, AR, ORI, FAA, ZULU, JP4, MEL, DOM ...... 

Yes, I know what most of those initials stand for. But beyond that, I can't necessarily tell you what they MEAN when they're all put together. Sometimes it's because I just don't use that kind of language, if you know what I mean. Other times, I can tell you what the letters stand for, but nothing beyond that. Learning the dialect of husband speak means learning what the letters mean, but it's not until husband speak is MASTERED that I could EXPLAIN them to anyone else. I know I won't ever master husband speak. It's kind of like "Spanglish". I never really mastered that either.

2.  Flipper, Quiche Wagon, and Wide Mouth Bottom Feeder - Terms of endearment for Boeing 737's. The wide mouths are the later models with bigger engines. You can use your imagination for the source of the other two.

3.  Boards - Speed brakes on military aircraft. 

4. Number 1 - You young parents might THINK you know what this means, but in this case, it's actually the lead airplane in a formation. The other airplanes in the formation have to keep up with Number 1. Different planes in the formation can take over the number 1 position and when that happens there is a simple flash of hand signals beside their helmets coupled with radio calls to make the change. I learned those hand signals before cell phones were invented and we had to travel with 2 cars. They came in very handy, actually.

5.  "Fatigue" - Being too tired to fly. 

I never heard this phrase until my handsome half had passed through both military and airline aviation. In the military, he was told to fly, so he flew. End of discussion. In the airline business, for the most part, schedules are built with the crews ability to fulfill the requirements before they become too tired to do so. But when he entered the realm of general aviation in the form of corporate flying, I became acquainted with the term "Fatigue", as in calling in to say "I'm going to fatigue", i.e. "I'm not going to fly because I'm just too tired". Military and airline pilots often have very little patience for the amount of "Fatigue-ing" that goes on among some general aviation pilots. But that's not a battle the Lord intended for me to fight. I just try to follow the conversation, remember?

6. Crew Food/Crew Meals - Food that the crews eat. You knew that one. PLEASE tell me you knew that one!

When the handsome half was in the military, he spent most of his time outside of the contiguous United States, flying at odd hours, and trying to figure out what foreign air traffic controllers were telling him to do. He often had to depend on the base or local snack bars for his meals, and the snack bars were usually manned by the local population, which meant that English was their second language. These sweet people often missed the sarcasm in much of what the crews said when they ordered meals before or after they flew. "Extra grease, please" or "A side of grease" were actually intended as negative commentaries on the meal. But these ESL folks would hear them say it and happily throw some extra grease on the grill. Yeah.........

7.  Spoilers - Civilian for #3

8.  "Guaming" - It's raining. That's what it often does on Guam

9.  "Prang It In" - A very hard landing. Sometimes after REALLY pranging it in, flight attendants "find their pantyhose at their ankles."

10. "Water Your Eyes" - The opposite of "prang it in". When the landing or flight performance is so good that it waters your eyes. 

11.  "Keep your smash up" - Get your airspeed up. Go fast. "Let the Big Dog Eat" means the same thing in civilian aviation. 

In the military, you get your smash up in order to catch up to number 1 (see #4). You got that, right? Because trailing number 1 by too much isn't a good thing. A "tight" (close) formation is way better. Conversely, "Too much smash" would mean you're at risk of overtaking number 1.... which would then make you number 1. But you never want to become number 1 with too much smash unless you're supposed to be the new number 1. If that's the case, you BETTER get your smash up or you'll never make it to number 1. Get it? You just got several terms with a heavy dose of that confusion I referenced earlier!

12. Long Steel Tube - Another name for McDonnell Douglas MD80's. Because............ that's right, children!! They look like long steel tubes. Very good!

No one ever said "Husband Speak" was terribly deep. 

13. Barbie Doll Jets - Fokker F100's. Supposedly, they're so easy to fly a Barbie doll could do it. Which means I'm NOT as smart as a Barbie doll. 

14. Blunt End Forward - See T-37. This is the first jet my better half ever flew. Why it's called "blunt end forward" is obvious just looking at it. It also had a distinctive whine while in flight. It was one of the many airplanes I came to recognize just by their distinctive sound.

15. Lawn Darts - I've only ever heard that term applied to Embraer's. I guess because they're kind of long and skinny ......like a dart. Hey. I don't make 'em up, I just learn what they mean.

16. White Papers - Incident reports to document out of the ordinary events on a particular flight. Again, I didn't learn this term until the hubs entered corporate aviation. And it doesn't make much sense. It's  not written on paper, and it's not white. Whatever. I CAN tell you that generating white papers is generally considered a pain in the keester. 

17. "Up and Locked" - Officially refers to the landing gear being up inside the body of the airplane and locked into place, thereby allowing safe flight. 

But I have to tell you, I love this term because the applications are endless. We often use it in reference to people or philosophies that are a bit (ok, sometimes a LOT) difficult to deal with. Even our kids know what 'up and locked' means. You don't want to be "Up and Locked".

18. Spinners - You'd think that this would have to do with some part that spins on an airplane. Not so, Kemosabe! It's a civilian aviation term that actually came into being with the companies that decided to forego assigned seating. 

When the flying public are not told where to sit, they tend to stand in the middle of the aisle while they try to decide where to sit. Sometimes this process of  decision making includes going back and forth from the front to the back looking for just the right seat. If you ever find yourself doing this, congratulations. You are a "Spinner". And it is because of spinners that flights are often delayed. I'm a seasoned traveler, and you can trust me to tell you the truth. THE SEATS ARE ALL THE SAME! One is no more comfortable than another. Just find one and sit down so we can get airborne!

19. MAC - A military acronym that stands for "Military Airlift Command". MAC is no longer in existence, and it's mission has been incorporated into other commands. My handsome half spent most of his military career in MAC. They flew airplanes 24/7 all over the globe. In fact, his squadron was called "Global Eagles". It was a good time in our lives. But that's not to say all of MAC was good. Often when something distasteful happens around our house, we often say "We MAC'ed". 

20. Early American MAC - The style of our household decorating. Because the hubs traveled so much, he was able to do some interesting shopping. At one time, much of our home was furnished with items he drug home from some other country. It didn't match, it wasn't a fancy brand name, and it never fit in a specific decorating type. It is a category all it's own, and few people appreciate it. My home is still, largely, "Early American MAC" and that's fine with me. It will always tumble my gyro's!

Let your speech be always with grace,

seasoned with salt,

that ye may know how

ye ought to answer every man.

Col. 4:6




Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-slivered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew -
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

"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



Mondays Grace 8/26/2013

Because of temperamental wifi on the road, this is last weeks grace. I just couldn't share it then. It's okay. It's still good. 

35 years of marriage to this guy. I'm so thankful.

After 4 years of dating, May 27, 1978

Garden Grove Community Church

Garden Grove, California

Intreat me not to leave thee,

or to return from following after thee:

For wither thou goest, I will go;

And where thou lodgest, I will lodge:

Thy people shall be my people,

And thy God, my God:

Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried:

The Lord do so me me, and more also,

If ought but death part thee and me.

Ruth 1:16-17

My Husbands' Eyes

We experienced a real miracle in our family. But sometimes, you have to wait a lot of years before you also see God’s grace at work in your life. To give you the full picture of that grace, I have to toot my husband’s horn a little.

My handsome half has perfect eyes. At least he did until age crept up on him! The fact he had 20/15 vision actually made them better than perfect. If there was ever any doubt in my mind, when we stood at the rim of Waimea Canyon and he talked about the goats at the bottom that I could only see with binoculars proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt!  But there is no reason that he should still be able to see, let alone see so perfectly.

When we were first married, he began having episodes that caused his eyes to become blood red and very painful. He’d visit the doctor only to be told that there was nothing wrong. The episodes were random and unpredictable, and went on for years, until quite by accident he was finally diagnosed.

We went, as a family, to get our eyes examined and the optometrist took one look at my husbands’ eyes and immediately called the ophthalmologist to take a look. He was whisked away to the surgery suite to be more thoroughly examined, and we were informed that he had been having acute glaucoma attacks for a decade or more and needed emergency surgery. From our description of the episodes he had experienced, the Dr. had no explanation as to why he could still see. Experience told him that my husband should have been blind.

So as he was strapped in and readied for laser blasts to his eye, our little girls, who were about 3 and 5 at the time, sat down with me in the small waiting area to pray for daddy’s eyes. All went well, and he actually went back to work the next day. Another appointment was scheduled for a month or so later for his other eye.

The procedure was performed in the same way, but with a very different result. This time around, it actually threw him into an acute attack and the pressure in his eye skyrocketed. Once again, our little girls and I sat in the waiting area and prayed for daddy’s eyes. Hours passed while the Dr. did everything he could think of. The office closed and we weren't gaining any ground.

Finally, long after everyone else had gone home, Dr. Smith (really, that’s his name!) sat us down and told us there was only one more thing he could try, but if it didn't work we would be going over to the hospital for conventional surgery. So as the girls prayed, the boys worked and then we waited.

The pressure finally came down. And, once again, my husband went back to work the next day.

I’m sure you've already figured out the miracle. My handsome half, against all odds, could still see perfectly when he should have been blind. But to recognize God’s grace, you have to know some other things.

When we chose the optometrist to check our eyes, we looked over a list of approved providers and made a random selection. He ‘just happened’ to detect the pressure elevation, and there ‘just happened’ to be one of the best ophthalmologist’s in the state in the office at the time we needed him.  This was in the 80’s and laser surgery was fairly new, but this guy had lots of training and experience. God, in His grace, had it all planned. There were no coincidences.

If the glaucoma had been diagnosed when it first began, conventional surgery would have been performed, and my husband’s career would have been over before it even began. You see, when he goes to work, his office is at 40,000 feet. He’s a pilot, and that means the FAA is intimately involved in all things health related. They had only approved laser surgery a very short time before he had it, and have never approved conventional surgery for the treatment of glaucoma. So by God’s grace, not only was his vision preserved, but the diagnosis was delayed until such time that technology advanced, and it could be treated in a manner that allowed him to continue to fly.

And because of God’s grace, my husband has logged over 21,000 flying hours while piloting countless prop driven airplanes and 12 different kinds of jets all over the world. He has 43 years at the controls doing what he loves. In that time, he’s broken the sound barrier, flown formation and performed acrobatics in high speed jets, done air refueling, worked on a team that set a worlds record for flight in chemical warfare gear, and flown a mission that coordinated research with the space shuttle. (Which, interestingly enough, included lasers!)

But more important than all that, he got to watch his children grow up. Those 2 little girls that prayed with me for daddy’s eyes in that waiting room all those years ago are now beautiful young women who have husbands and children of their own. And their dad has been able to watch their ‘littles’ grow too.

Each breath we take, every blink of the eye, down to the smallest detail of our ability to function, is all sustained by God’s power, and enabled by His grace. We have so much to be thankful for. 

The Lord gives grace and glory; 

No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. 

Ps. 84:11

Who IS That Woman!!??

Have you seen that commercial that features a forensic artist drawing women as they described themselves, and then drawing them again as someone else described them? He never saw their faces and worked solely off the descriptions. There were startling differences in the two drawings of the same women! It served to illustrate that most of us don’t see ourselves as the world does. For most, the misconceptions run the gamut!

How do you see yourself? I really miss my daughters now that they’re out on their own. One was especially good at helping me to know when to re-think my look. When I heard “Is that what you’re wearing?” I knew it was time to go change. And more often than not these days, I look down at what I have on, or catch a glimpse in the car mirror after I’ve left the house only to hear the voice in my head scream “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!?”  

But, wait. I’m digressing to a whole ‘nother blog entry! That will have to wait until later.

So, I was looking at a picture of several of our family members around a fire pit at the beach and couldn’t figure out who the woman in the center of the picture was. It was a candid shot, and so she was in profile. I racked my brain for several minutes and for the life of me couldn’t remember anyone outside of our extended family that had been there that evening. Who was she?

I finally showed the picture to my handsome half and he started to laugh. “It’s you.” (Yeah, the ‘moron’ was simply implied.) Nuh stinking uh! Really? When did THAT happen!!? The woman who sat in that picture had ‘light’ colored hair (if you know what I mean) and was completely unrecognizable. Wow.

I’ll admit to passing a mirror in a store and saying ‘excuse me’ before catching myself. On the outside, I’m white haired, and a little dumpy. But inside my head, I’m still dark haired with an athletic build. Perhaps it’s time to get rid of mirrors altogether………………..

  A gray head is a crown of glory;

It is found in the way of righteousness

Prov. 16:31