Crop Dusting & Helicopters

I woke up way too early this morning and after packing JP's breakfast & lunch (yes, I do that almost every day; he works hard, it's the least I can do) I decided that the best way to get through this day and the inferno that it is outside (we are in yet another heat wave), is to spend the day in bed.
My bedroom has black shades and is as dark and cool as a cave - you literally cannot tell if it is day or night in there - which makes it the perfect place to hibernate until November the current heat wave we're having subsides.

There I was languishing luxuriously in bed, just started to drift back to slumber and blissful ignorance of the outside temperature and the incessant, oppressive sunlight when, from a distance, I could hear a buzzing consistent with that of an airplane. 

If, let's say, the airplane was headed straight toward your house.

Here is where I will segue into the story about when I was younger and wintering in Miami Beach and I decided to go out and get the Sunday paper for my parents who were still sleeping.

Every year just after Christmas we packed up and headed out of New Jersey to Miami Beach where we spent the next couple of months avoiding cold weather and living la vida loca*.  We always rented a place on Collins Avenue which was the place to be if you were a yankee snowbird. 

If you are not familiar with Collins Avenue, here is what it mostly looked like although there were more high-rise buildings that had been built where some of the iconic motels once stood:

So there I was, walking along Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, while my parents were back in our hotel sound asleep having no idea that I was off on a solo Sunday morning adventure**. 

Obviously, Collins Ave was heavily tourist-y and subsequently had many, many tourist-y attractions, including a place where you could go on a helicopter ride if you were so inclined.

 
The helicopters took off all day long and to a seasoned Miami Beach winter resident such as my young self, their novelty had worn off and I mostly didn't pay much attention to them.

I was almost to the corner where there was a bank of newspaper vending machines when I noticed that one of the helicopters had started up at the helicopter ride place that was directly across the street from where I was. I heard the engine start, then heard the 'whirrrr' noise of the propeller.  They're kind of loud so they get your attention and I stopped walking to watch it take off because I don't think I'd ever actually been that close before which is why they got my attention on that day.  I remember that the noise and wind was kind of a thrill.

Up it went, right across from me. 

I stood there watching as it got about maybe 50 or so feet in the air.

And then I stood there, still watching, as all the noise stopped and just like that, it fell out of the sky, crashing directly across the street from me.

I stood there, frozen, for a long time while people went running and then when the emergency vehicles came and then when - thrill of all thrills for a young girl - the televison news people showed up and they even interviewed me, asking what I saw.

At some point, I remembered why I was there in the first place, so I actually still went to the newspaper machines, bought the paper and then raced back to the hotel where I was sure my parents were by now awakened by the noise of all the hoopla just down the street where the crash had happened and were probably worried sick and consoling each other in their deep despair as they imagined the worst possible fate that could have befallen me.

Except, no.

They were still asleep, unaware that their daughter had slipped out and just had a near-death experience or brush with death or any other expression you can think of that describes when a helicopter falls out of the sky and lands 30 or so feet from where you are standing.

I woke them up and breathlessly told them everything that had happened.  We all agreed that I was very, very lucky that it hadn't crashed onto me and that it was probably a good idea if we went to IHOP for breakfast since what I probably needed was to order a Happy Face Pancake Combo to help calm me down from my harrowing experience.

What no one knew that day was that I had instantly developed a lifelong fear of helicopters and anything else that flies too low and has a loud engine and could potentially fall out of the sky right in front of me...or on top of me.

Which brings us back to today and me laying in bed hearing a plane that I knew was way too loud and way too close.  When you have a morbid fear of something, you develop keen senses that will alert you when related dangers present themselves.

Next thing I know, there is most definitely an airplane flying back and forth over my house and I can tell that it's very, very low.

I race outside, heart pounding and in my throat, and lo and behold there is a yellow bi-plane banking just above the treetops that surround my house. I won't repeat what I said out loud but it was something that sounded like "what the duck".

I had my phone in my hand so I took a couple of videos...

... just in case the NTSB found my phone when they were digging through the crash site that used to be my house and could use my videos as proof that, yes, the plane had been flying dangerously low and that's how come they found me like this...like a scene out of a movie:

The next thing I did was call JP because - well, I don't know why since he is at work an hour away and has no authority anyway to stop the plane from flying over me.  I called him anyway, for sympathy I guess, comforting maybe? - but instead he starts reminding me that our house is surrounded by farmland and that planes have to crop dust and...

wait for it...

"you don't have anything to worry about because the pilot of that plane is a professional".

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, he's a professional! 

So I was today years old when I found out that planes and helicopters that crash are being piloted by NON-professionals!  Who knew!?

My husband comes from farm stock. He has great faith in and an abundance of admiration for farmer-type people; those who drive tractors and every other kind of farm equipment; and apparently those who fly airplanes in order to spread whatever it is they use to protect crops.  Bless his heart.

You can imagine that he was not very amused when I told him I was going to do this:

Anyway, no farms no food, right? I live in an amazing house in an amazing area with wonderful neighbors and tons of open land including the farms that surround us, which I love more than I can say. It's rural living and just like the well noise that runs every time we use water or the idea of a large septic tank in my beauftiful yard filled with....well, never mind about that...there are things I will just have to get used to.

Because of my history of witnessing an airborne thing fall out of the sky and resultant panic whenever something like that is too low or too near, I guess I'll just leave the next time the Yellow Baron decides to do loop-de-loops over my house and hope that he is the professional my husband believes him to be and will not at any point crash into my house.

*Back then my mother would notify school that I wouldn't be there for a few months and could they please provide an assignment list for all my subjects...and they actually did this. I would schlep all my schoolbooks with me to FL and get months worth of homework done in the first week in MB so that I could enjoy my carefree winter, swimming and sunning whilst my classmates back in NJ would be stuck in school all day and shoveling snow when they weren't in school all day.
When we returned to NJ, I would hand in my work and no one ever questioned anything or made me take any of the tests I would have missed all winter. I suspect that the teachers probably just said 'whatever' and tossed my work in a drawer, never to be seen or thought about again.

**It was not unusual for me to go off on adventures by myself even at a very young age (10-ish). My parents left me alone most days at the hotel by myself and so I developed a strong sense of adventure. This is a long story which I will tell in another post at another time.