Respect

A month ago tomorrow Oshkosh ended. I still need to update about it, but one story from my adventure I'll share now because it has to do with events that occurred last night.

One of the first panels I went to at Oshkosh was an American F-4 pilot, Gen. Dan Cherry, and a Vietnamese MiG pilot, Hong My Nguyen, who were friends after trying to kill each other in war. Gen. Cherry very nearly succeeded, shooting the wing off of the MiG and causing Hong My to parachute out. Gen. Cherry wonders if the other pilot survived, and 30 years later they met  face-to-face. The meeting results in them becoming friends. If that wasn't amazing enough, Hong My needs an interpreter to speak English. They have a language barrier between them and they still became close friends!!

I was sitting there, listening to their story in awe and admit I got a little misty-eyed. Hong My says through his interpreter that they were never enemies; just soldiers on separate sides of the war. Can you imagine that??? Someone tries to shoot you down and you barely escape with your life and decades later, you have the maturity and wisdom to move past it because you realize it wasn't personal. Wow... just wow... It certainly speaks volumes about his character. Not many of us have that kind of insight and clarity.

As I was sitting there listening to their remarkable story, I was just blown away by Hong My's overall positive attitude. I started thinking that if these two guys can get past their differences after this and become close friends, then the rest of us should be embarrassed for the petty differences that we let drive us apart. People drop each other from facebook because of a political disagreement. Grown people get into one another's faces over something as simple as a miscommunication. Shame on all of us. If these two men can become friends, then we have no excuses for our behavior. If they can get along, then why can't we?

I describe Oshkosh as paradise and I'm not exaggerating. While I was there, someone said there was rumored to be a million people in attendance. I just looked up the actual figures that were released not too long ago - 508,000. 1/2 a million. Regardless, still a big number in such a small place.

So for one week, 508,000 people got along in harmony. I'm sure there had to be arguments/disagreements, but if there were, I never saw them. One of the things I miss the most and find the hardest to let go of was how everyone treated each other with respect. We all came from different places (states, countries), came from different backgrounds, were involved in the aviation world in different ways, had different ages, different genders, & different colors. There were 1st years, like me, and there were people who had been there since the beginning. You had the Homebuilders, the Warbirds, the Experimentals, and the Ultralights. There were other student pilots like me, CFI's, professional airline guys, weekend flyers, aerobatic pilots, fellow air show groupies, military pilots, and probably much more I'm forgetting. And probably we each overlapped more than one of those categories. So many differences.... yet we all came together for one thing in common: aviation.

Suddenly none of those differences mattered. I was treated as an equal during my stay. One pilot told me that he was an engineer and used to think the best pilots were engineers, but then he came to Oshkosh and was proved wrong by the vast number of pilots who don't have an engineering background.

I spent time with homebuilders and aerobatic pilots, who treated me just like one of them. Why? "Because I would be one of them" was one of their responses.

We had our differences (I'm sure), but they never came up. We were able to come together because of our love for one thing and differences didn't matter. It's how strangers became like family in the mere span of one week. People smiled and said "hello" when you walked past them. It was so easy to strike up conversations with people - you were always sharing a seat with a random person on the bus or sharing a picnic table at lunch with new people. We had the best ice breaking questions in the world - "Where are you from?", "Did you fly or drive here?", "Are you a pilot?". The area was as clean as a golf course because people picked up a piece of trash if they saw it on the ground; didn't matter if it belonged to them or not. Everyone was equal. We concentrated on what brought us together, rather than what tore us apart.

Something happened to me while I was there. I built an intolerance for people fighting. I never particularly liked fighting, but I loved politics and would jump into the fray when people got into heated debates. For some reason, it hurts my ears now. If someone tries to engage me in a fight or create unnecessary drama, I walk away. If someone is fighting around me and tries to pull me in, I walk away. Simple as that.

I guess I always tolerated it because I thought it was human nature to fight. Sure peace would be nice in a perfect world, but it couldn't exist because our nature as humans was to fight since we were just so different. Oshkosh taught me differently - 508,000 people living in respectful harmony for 8 or 9 days. I'm not idealistic enough to think it would last permanently if Oshkosh was 365 days a year... but why can't the rest of us at least try?

Unfortunately, I haven't enjoyed CAP since returning. I think part of it is the lack of equality there. I get it- I really do, they have titles and ranks, so of course it can't be "equal". But it bothered me a lot since returning and I felt there was something else that felt off. Last night (I won't go into too much detail), but it hit me what it was - not the titles or the ranks, but the respect. You can still have seniority over someone and keep the respect in tact. Everyone deserves respect regardless of rank or title.We're all volunteers who love aviation and want to help people. If that isn't enough to bring everyone together, I don't know what is.

Well, last night was a complete lack of respect. Involved a simple miscommunication that erupted into something much worse. It imploded from the inside out and the two guys who had the problem with one another pulled everyone else into the middle of it, which I did not appreciate. I almost feel we've never graduated from the sandbox on the playground and one kid is crying because another smooshed his sand castle. Geez... c'mon now. I've got way too much to do with my own goals and studying to waste time on pettiness like that.

You guys know how much I love CAP. I've met so many great people and have learned so much since joining. I couldn't figure out why I was unhappy there since coming back from Oshkosh. Part of the reason I missed last week's meeting to go off to the EAA meeting was to take a small break from them. I didn't want to hate them, so figured a small break would help. I was happy to find out it was just what I needed and I was ecstatic to return this week. In addition this week, my computer had died and I was a little sick, but still had managed to stay on schedule and accomplished a lot with regards to aviation and CAP training. I was on top of the world and practically skipped off to the meeting. My goals were finally coming together and I got the feeling that I might actually make it. That, by the way, is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

Then I got to the meeting, not feeling very respected by what occurred and not feeling well to top it all off... and well, I'm now contemplating taking a few weeks off. Who knows if it has settled down, so might as well back off for a bit to let things settle before returning back. I've gotten to the point where I don't care who is "right" and who is "wrong"; you are both wrong for fighting and disrespecting each other.

On another note -Not so much aerospace related, but I've started taking classes on Khan Academy and having an absolute blast! I've learned that learning things makes me happy. Looks like this website will help towards two of my short term goals, too!

Anyways, that's all for now. Glad to finally have a computer back! Yikes- we're heading into the last week of August next week!!! I wanted to shoot for my written about the 1st week of September... guh...