People are not a peppermint but rather a wonderment. Out there, there are many flavours. Good hearted givers and ruthless takers. There are takers and givers and those too that just are indifferent to know whether they’re taking or whether they’re giving.
This is story about a giver.
I’ve lived in the same apartment block as Dean for many a year now. Dean does night shifts.
Not getting much more than an ‘hello’ out of each other I thought he either dug graves or sat security reading hand-me-down magazines and drinking Miranda orange soda. I thought he wore dark pants and a white ironed shirt, with a collar as sharp as Lukes Light Saber since he just respected his security shift. I really thought he ate big loaves of white bread and pink polony. Having sat on my ivory throne I judged. Little did I know, it doesn’t matter what you wear, what hours you pull, what kind of bean you pull, or what you scoff. Don’t judge a beast by its hairy back.
‘with pleasure, krrr over and out’ , said Dean over the imaginary microphone.
So we synchronised our clocks for a Sunday eve and with me, I brought Marty and his wee clone Eli.
We motor-boated through on Sunday eve to Kempton Park, a forgotten
crevice but for that which it harbours-Johannesburg International Airport and
Comair’s flight simulation campus.‘it’s a Playstation 25’, gloated Dean, and by golly gilga-mamy was he right.
From the highway we could see the half-moon glowing hangars peering as the nose-end of the Millenium Falcon grazing past us as we did 120 on the highway. Once inside we were awed by the day-glo hefty, lofty air space. and there before us stood the giant simulation pods, formless, figureless, purely functional, at once static.
Dean gave us some insight and out of the corner of my oculus, the once static shifted. ‘it shifted, argh, it shifted.’ On hydraulic feet they hovered, moving slowly, yawing and banking ever so gently like giant hulks suspended in the open weightless sky. The simulators suck their life from the multitude of wires plugged into the main frame extending intravenously into the pod as a reliant, needy patient. The behemoths move silently, unawares of the outside world, like arachnids constructing, engrossed in assembling webs.
From 18:37 to 18:39pm we were ejected from the quotidian into the extra-ordinary by the turn of a knob. Into the cockpit of a 737-800, we were flung, an exact replica. The flicks, switches, buttons, turns, and levers, a mangled ordered assembly that only years of academics and more of play would reveal their function.
Having been handed the pilots seat I sat at King Shaka Airport awaiting taxiing. I took hold of the throttle, grabbed the Kit-like steering control, slowly let the jets warm up and eventually pushed up on the throttle hurtling us to 350kays and hour, my ruddered feet kept us on the straight and narrow, and finally pulling up on the control we had lift off. It was phantasmagorical. It was sublime, it was supremative. I flew along the south coast, banked to the right and came round to land making sure my nose was up, my speed was pin point, my angle was within safe parameters and I had 2 red lights on either side of the cross hair. the touch down was safe
my back drenched and the caked salt giving me Elvis Preslian lambchops, this was the ride of my life. Me, Marty and Eli all got the chance to live another reality, to fly a jet plane. Dean gave of his time, and he pledged more.
By the Roar of The Russian Bear Hunter, this was a story about a giver.
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