Just two days earlier I had been safe and sound sort of And Grandpa and I were on a plane a million miles above the Atlantic Ocean That’s the sort of part How can you even be remotely safe when you are inside a steel object weighing about a trillion pounds that is hanging in the air or at least hurtling through it and might at any second fall out of the sky and send every last person inside it to a fiery death arms and legs ripped off heads severed and blood splattered all over the place and perhaps I shouldn’t go on I won’t even mention the remains-getting-eaten by-sharks part Not that I’m sensitive Grandpa sure isn’t I can picture him now sitting there next to me in our economy-class seats not a big spender is David McLean and looking highly insensitive That doesn’t sound right and I don’t think I mean it the way it came out He’s a good man and a caring grandfather and just about perfect in every way even though he’s old Sometimes I actually wish he wasn’t so perfect I doubt he talks to himself inside his 2 shane peacock
head like this But at that moment on the plane he looked like he didn’t have a care in the world a real guy strong and manly and bold We were on our way to Sweden which at the time was a good thing and I was about to barf which obviously wasn’t I had my attention on the throw-up bag in the pocket of the seat in front of me eyeing it sideways so he couldn’t tell I was looking at it so lovingly I’m not a good flier Never was and never will be Grandpa on the other hand is among the best in the history of the world the universe the Milky Way and beyond World War II hero and all that goes with it pilot of every plane known to mankind and for many years the operator of what he called an import export business I could never figure out what that really was and what he really did But he flew all over the world doing stuff And now that he’s retired he’s still flying all over the world doing stuff He has lots of friends in all parts of the globe and he likes to visit them 3 separated
A while back he stopped in at our house in Buffalo and offered to take me on one of his trips to celebrate my becoming a man as he put it and clapped me so hard on the shoulder that I just about fell over He’d made similar offers to all six of his grandsons and had already followed through on a few What he meant by man was a teenager a thirteen-year-old I was still a few months from that then though I’m almost there now But age was beside the point the chance he gave me to go far away to the land of IKEA and the world’s best meatballs and other cool things was something I was into immediately I should have been in school it being the first week of September and all That was an added bonus when he made the offer and maybe helped blind me to the fact that I was going to have to fly in an airplane to go on this trip From way up there in the plane the weather outside or at least down below appeared amazing We were high above wispy white clouds that looked like massive stretched-out cotton balls and the 4 shane peacock
sky was clear blue all around us I use the word sky loosely because as far as I could figure out from the altitude the pilot said we were at we were basically in space That meant that when we started to fall we’d reach terminal velocity really quickly Maybe we’d die before we even hit the ocean before the plane ripped into the water like an atomic bomb into concrete disintegrated and evaporated all of us But there was Grandpa disgustingly calm sitting beside me with his black beret still on his head smiling at me every now and then and each time I gave him my best fake smile back his earbuds in and music pumping out of them Yep I said pumping This guy is God knows how old I’ve lost track but he’s over eighty for sure and he was listening to the Black Eyed Peas or something like that It sure sounded like Boom Boom Pow I knew he was a Frank Sinatra fan he always slapped me hard on the back when he had that sort of historical stuff ramped up on his stereo My cousins tell me 5 separated
