Sept 25, 2020

Our eldest son gardens some, flies airplanes, pilots sailboats, tugboats, pleasure boats, and ships; teaches professional ship-handling proficency, makes the choicest Caesar salad, loves his kid, his dog, and island life; sings, song-writes, plays a mean guitar, slide or otherwise, thinks logically, cares about grammar but dares saying, ‘me and him,’ and usually fails to surprise me. 

However, when recently a supposed expert stated that most airline accidents occur in the first three minutes, or the last eight minutes of flight, my admiration ratcheted up a notch when our eldest of three exhibited his native ‘expert in all things-first child awareness’ by stating the obvious: “All airline accidents occur in the last 30 seconds of flight.” 

Here’s where I need to go with that.

How I do long for facts to be so simple, so straightforward, so obvious, so accurate.

Wait! I have family, friends, and acquaintances expert enough in fields of politics, theology, ethics, finance, science, and social do’s & don’ts to turn statements of “seems to me” to “no question about it.” 

“But,” I say.

“No buts about it,” say they. “End of discussion.”

“Anything you want to know can be known by asking me, said my grandfather about politics.”The Bible says it, we believe it, that settles it,” ran the awesome line of certitude proffered me in my evangelical childhood; I hear it still today among some members of that community. Scientist are equally sure about all “stuff,” and can even throw back their shoulders and raise their chins defiantly as they spread sure explanations for non-stuff (like love, or equations).  Blood pressure? Reflux? The cause of cancer? Masks? Ask medical experts or your Uncle Ned, and hear opinions touted as fact. My snarling California neighbor knew how to put a foot down about property lines until a surveyor robbed her of certainty. And I? Don’t get me started on things I’m sure I know.

Oh my, how easily opinions or hypotheses disguise themselves as certainties or absolutes; how unwilling many of us are to be put to the test. Some statements are firmly right; most would do well submitted to a cooperative search for truth. Don’t we long for some fun to be found as we struggle to know, to really know? 

“All airline accidents occur in the last 30 seconds of flight.”

The son who posted that statement of fact, also asked, “What sound does an airplane make on landing?

. . .

Boeing, Boeing, Boeing

I rest my case.