Above Brazil

Hello, Amorella on board. Humor is not so easily defined, even ‘gallows humor’. Merriam-Webster has a definition: “Humor that makes fun of a life-threatening, disastrous, or terrifying situation”.

This is surprising, Amorella, because I don’t think of ‘gallows humor’ like that. I never looked the word up before. I always took it to mean humor with some dark wit and usually ironic twist to it. For instance, in yesterday’s post, having one’s heartansoulanmind stretched out two dimensionally for personal introspection is funny because, from my perspective this is what my books and this and my informational blog do, stretch me out to dry (ink-wise). It is not life-threatening, disastrous, or terrifying.

Do you see humor in such circumstance?

I do. Once we left New York for Rio de Janeiro for a stop and then flew on to Sao Paulo, Brazil where we were to be teaching at Escola Graduada for two years. It was my first commercial flight. In high school I had taken a plane ride with one of my friends. His uncle was the pilot and owner of the Piper Cub. That had been a great first time flying adventure.

Carol (wife and partner) and I were on our first flight to South America. Wouldn’t you know, earlier that week we saw the disaster film Airport (1970). Flying commercially made me anxious because if something happened to the pilot or co-pilot I couldn’t fly the plane. I don’t like not having control of my life, never did. We waited quite a while to leave Kennedy. About two or three in the morning we had a problem. The plane dropped out of the sky fairly quickly. No announcement. As we kept dropping in altitude a few people were waking up. A few started saying prayers and the like.

Carol was asleep. I woke her and asked if it was normal to have fire coming out of the back of the closest engine on the right wing. She thought it was normal and re-closed her eyes. Fairly soon though most everyone was awake and we found ourselves cruising over the rain forests at only a few hundred feet. There was a full moon and you could clearly see the tree tops which suddenly and abruptly gave way to water.

I thought, ‘well, this is it, we are going to ditch in the mouth of the Amazon and I am the big guy on board and the millions of little piranha are going to gobble me up first.’ I don’t remember being afraid as much as thinking, ‘let’s get this over with quickly and be done with it.’ This immediately became very funny when I suddenly had the feeling that’s what the little fish with big sharp teeth were saying to themselves waiting for the plane to hit, ‘let’s get this meal done quickly and be done with it.’

That’s how you remember it?

It was something like that. Humor took over. Actually, it didn’t have to think up the little joke because a little further across the river, which took a very long time to cross by the way, there is a town called Belem. The lights were out in the city because that is the way it was back then to save on electricity and when the plane banked to the left after it crossed the river, ahead we could see the lights come on at the runway. Once we landed the pilot came on the radio and said we had wasted too much fuel waiting at Kennedy. We re-fueled and were on our way. Ever since I figure any time you can walk off a plane after it has been in the air is a good flight. I always thank the pilot when we land.

That wasn’t so bad was it?

No. I didn’t know what you were going to do with humor. I didn’t know I was going to get to tell an old story from life as it was.

Tomorrow, the difference between fiction and nonfiction.

You mean I didn’t remember the incident correctly?

I mean, you remember the story the same way every time you tell it, and it did happen, so the memory was a reality at one time, even though for others, particularly those who were praying, this was a quite terrifying event.