This was not safety, this was life on the run, a life of paranoia, a life of hoping every day that you never ran into anyone who could identify you and turn you in for extra rations, or favor from the local Arrow Cross party, or just to be vindictive.

When I was a kid, I turned seven a couple of months before the bully down the street did and, somehow, I got it into my head that just because I was now the older one, I could put him in his place. I got my clock cleaned.

So what did these unwashed stoners who thought you could cure STDs with crystals have that the current left doesn’t? They were out on the street, they were in the parks, out in the cities, day or night.

Then, much quicker than I had imagined, the horse was there. He was right on top of me, and his eyes were wide and full of the fire of sudden liberty, and I thought, What the fuck am I doing?

Fight or flight kicked into overdrive, and being of redneck stock, my basic animal instincts are never that far from the surface anyway.

They would let me turn on the big neon sign at sundown and switch it from “Vacancy” to “No Vacancy” as it was warranted. The rest of the sign was always lit up.

“This is bad,” Cyndi said. “Shingles hurt a lot.” And they do. This is why Harrison Ford dropped out of presenting at the Oscars. They hurt so bad that professional movie tough guy Harrison Ford sat out one of the biggest honors his profession doles out.

I called 911. The operator said, “Is the person who handed you the book still there?” He was staring at me wide eyed and sweating. I said he was. “Ok, don’t let him leave, units are on their way.

It is the 90s. There’s no Google. There’s no research. You just make shit up as you go and you always get it wrong and that’s just how the 90’s worked.

Their polite avoidance of anything that had happened that summer meant that there wasn’t a lot to talk about, except current events. Current events were not something an American really wanted to discuss in 2003.

Some people travel Europe by rail. We chose to travel by emotional roller coaster.

That was when I looked up from my mass-market Peanuts book and out the window at what I assumed was the great western desert outside of Los Angeles—the kind of place where kidnap victims were hauled out and left for dead before Ponch, Jim Rockford, or the boys from Adam-12 could find them.

This was everything TV had promised me California would be. Of course, we were in Kansas, but at five years old, I didn’t know the difference.

This brings me back to those early near visits to the airport. The ones in the parking lot with my family. And that brings me to the first ever air related, near fatality I witnessed.

I once met a woman in Los Angeles whose name escapes me now. It is driving me nuts. I have googled and googled and asked ChatGpt, and scoured the old movie subreddits and when I tell you who I met, and the story she told me, it’s going to drive you nuts too.