It was supposed to be a wonderful day…then tragedy struck. How many times have we heard that sentiment leading up to a story?
The good news? No one got killed.
The bad news? I am not over the proverbial hump yet. I still have the disease. The disease of fear.
I pay as much attention to the news as I can to keep somewhat informed. No, I do not watch Fox News or CNBC…and neither should you. Just a bunch of windbags separating the country while they make money doing it. Not a healthy thing for anyone. I pine for the days of Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor and David Brinkley. They gave it to us straight. Well, maybe they didn’t…but it sure seemed liked it. This was a time when the World Series got better ratings than college football.
I digress…I digress because I am stalling. I don’t want to go on…but I need to. I have studied counseling theory. I need to continue for my own good. I need to discuss it. I need to let it out.
I do watch some news. Perhaps I am paranoid. Anyway, yesterday I saw news footage of a plane crash landing in Taipei. You might have seen it. It made me cringe. It made me remember. It made me uneasy.
Follow along.
I made plans for the greatest two weekends of pro football I could ever imagine. In 2012 the NFL schedule makers actually got it right. In the first two weekends of November the Cincinnati Bengals were playing host to the Denver Broncos and the New York Giants. Translation: the Manning brothers, Peyton and Eli, were bringing their teams to the Queen City for games against the Bengals in consecutive weeks. Being the Manning fan I am, it was a time to behold.
The first week the Denver Broncos came to town. I was for the Broncos. This was also a time for me to get to a game with a couple of my childhood cronies I have managed to maintain good times with thirty-some years later. I went to this game with my pals Kelly Samons and Mick Rutherford. They were both in my wedding to my dear wife, Carrie.
We had a great time, the three of us. Peyton threw his touchdown passes. Having attended Colts games and rooted for him in the Horseshoe, it was odd to see him running out on the field in that choppy gate of his in a blue helmet. He went from being a Colt to being a Bronco. What does that mean? The Broncos won the game handily.
Me, Kelly Samons, and Mick Rutherford
The next week my favorite team, the New York Giants, came to town.
This week I took my Dad and my dear Carrie to the game.
We parked across the Ohio River in Kentucky. We walked over the bridge at Newport and made our way to Paul Brown Stadium. As you can tell by our attire, the weather was kinder than is was the week before. It was a very pleasant November day in Cincinnati, Ohio.
It was Veterans Day, November 11th. The stadium was decorated and a card section was in the stadium to pay tribute to our country’s veterans. This was of great significance to us. Our oldest son, Jarrett, was in Afghanistan at the time, stationed there by the US Army. He was a crew chief on a Blackhawk helicopter.
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The field was adorned with a flag and the East stands spelled out Thank You Veterans.
Then…as fate would have it…a plane came in from the Southeast to make a flyover of Paul Brown Stadium.
This plane changed me.
If you can see the bank of the plane from left to right…you can tell it is heading opposite of the stands I was sitting in. I have witnessed many flyovers of sporting events in my time. Each and every time it has always been the same. The flyovers are maneuvered over the length of the field…from one end zone to the other across the length of the field. Not so this day in Cincinnati.
Carrie and Dad and I were sitting in just a few rows in the upper deck that is on the West side of the Paul Brown Stadium. It was the side of the field the New York Giants were on. When the cargo plane came in for a flyover it was heading in from the Southeast over the Ohio River toward Paul Brown Stadium with its nose down in the direction of the West stands we were sitting in.
In short, I looked to my right when the public address announcer said this plane was approaching and all I could see…and I can still see them…were cockpit windows close enough that I could easily make out the windshield wipers that sat at rest below the windows. I had never seen such a sight at a football game flyover. Being that my whole point of reference for flyovers went out the “window”, and that what I saw was the nose of a plane heading in my direction…well…it wasn’t pretty.
The body can do some physiologically strange things.
Translation: When I saw this plane seemingly heading my way, my brain told the rest of my body to brace for impact. My body did just that. When the flyover was over, my wife and my Dad saw me humped over in my stadium seat. Neither one wanted to address me. They thought I had become a bit emotional given the Veteran’s Day acknowledgement and they thought I was just caught up in the moment thinking about Jarrett. They gave me my space. When I never seemed to be doing better after a minute or so, one of them asked me if I was okay. I told them I was not.
In the course of my brain telling the rest of my body to brace for the impact of the plane I had no doubt was going to crash into the stadium, my rear personage from my neck down to my Achilles tendons became a two inch thick muscle cramp prompted by my brain.
It was the perfect storm, I thought. This plane was going to crash into the side of the stadium behind the New York Giants. The team from the same town that was terrorized by planes in 2001. That is what my brain told the rest of me. My day was done.
We stayed for the game. The Giants got beat. I got beat worse. I was a nervous, mentally unstable guy. I had a babysitter die on me when I was five. I have known loss of family and friends that would make a man sick for three days. This was different. This was involuntary. I didn’t think about any of it. I went from getting ready to watch a game I had been waiting on to hyperventilating as my Dad thought I was having a heart attack.
Things didn’t get better very soon. I went to the Doctor three days later and told him I needed something for my nerves. I was walking on eggshells and when I drove to work I was convinced I was going to be hit by most oncoming vehicles. Two weeks later I finally got to feeling better.
Last summer I suffered a huge setback…a panic attack if one ever existed.
For the first time in my life I was driving up the New York/New Jersey Turnpike. Little did I know that on one of the busiest, nastiest roads I have road I have ever driven, there would be the view of Manhattan and the new Freedom Tower where the Twin Towers sat on my right…and planes coming in low and hard into Newark International Airport on my left. It was too much. I went into panic.
Want to stop on the New York/New Jersey Turnpike? Good luck with that. I was at the point of no return. Breathing heavy if I was breathing at all. I was so scared that I was putting my dear Carrie’s safety in jeopardy. I couldn’t enjoy driving past the Metlife Stadium where the New York Giants play their home games. I was concentrating on the lines I was trying to keep our Ford Edge in between and nothing else. We drove over the George Washington Bridge. I remember it. I can’t see it. I was scared. Finally, we got into the country North of New York City. I found a place to pull off to breathe and convince myself I was going to keep living.
The plane that crashed in Taipei looked a great deal like the one that flew crazily into Cincinnati that day in November 2102.
If I had the pilot of that plane in front of me, I would kick him in the shins…both of them. Then I would ask him what he was thinking. I don’t for a minute believe the maneuver he pulled over that stadium was up to regulation.
Will I get over all this? I sure hope so.
If you are wondering, yes…I have flown since this debacle. I have no beef with getting on a plane and taking a ride. It helps if I don’t have to watch.
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson