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Greyson
The propellers continuedto whir until they slowed to a chug-chug-chug and eventually stopped. I pulled the plane into the center of the hanger, letting it coast to a final stop after the propellers stilled.
I turned off the engine, then hopped out of the cockpit, landing on the concrete floor of the hanger with a resounding thud. It was always surprisingly loud when I got out of the air. Perhaps because of the quiet I felt when I was up in the sky, or perhaps because I took off my headgear.
Either way, it always seemed to me like it was far too loud for the first few minutes after I got back to the ground.
“Didn’t know if you were showing up today.” I laughed when I saw Kenton walking over to me.
“I was writing you a letter, hoping you’d get it by Monday. Wanted to tell you I was taking the day off. Today, that is,” he joked.
“You were going to write me a letter telling me you were taking today off, and you hoped I’d get it by Monday?” I asked with a laugh. He nodded, and I just shook my head, the grin still on my face. “Why don’t you just get a phone like the rest of the world? I could text you and have most of the questions I ever need to ask answered in seconds, not days.”
“I don’t see why phones ever had to be a thing,” he said. “It’s a waste of money and time if you ask me.”
“Because I get to talk to you directly when I need to, and not wait for the next time I see you?” I replied.
“Sure,” he said. “But you never hear about me complaining about spam callers or being harassed by cold calls or anything like that, do you? There’s a reason for that, you know?”
“It’s hard to get a cold call when you don’t have a phone,” I said. “Or a social media account, or email address, or anything. How did you even make it through school if you don’t do any of that stuff?”
“For the hundredth time, I got through school just like everyone who has ever gone to school ever did.” He rolled his eyes. “And I passed with flying colors, no pun intended.”
He grinned with his joke, and I knew he for sure meant for it to be a pun. But, I didn’t mind. We were always teasing each other in one way or another, and that was just another way in which we were. He liked to tease me, and I liked to tease him. It was just the way we did things.
Kenton had been my best friend for as long as I could remember. But, he hadn’t ever gotten on board with the internet or cell phones or anything like that. He was a kid who had grown up playing outside, and he was determined never to lose that appreciation for real life. Not that I felt phones did anything to take away from my real life experience, but then, I wasn’t Kenton.
He did things his way, and I felt he was largely growing up in the wrong generation. But, we still got along. Better than ever, perhaps because of the fact that he didn’t have social media or anything else to take up his time. He lived his life in the moment, and I had to admit, there was a lot I could learn from him.
“Anyway, will you take a look at the right wing? There’s still something up with that propeller. Stopped twice on me in the air, and I was pretty sure it was going to catch fire up there today. I shut it off and used the left to handle the descent, but I don’t feel comfortable getting back up there until you have it fixed.”
“Why the hell did you go up there without asking me about it first anyway?” Kenton asked. “You told me Tuesday you were having issues with the propeller, so I don’t for the life of me know why you would want to take it up there without the full certificate of approval first.”
“Because I told you Tuesday,” I said with a laugh. “It’s Saturday. I figured you would have found the time in your busy schedule to take a look at it by now. And besides, it was out back with the others, so I figured you’d fixed it.”
“I looked at it, but I didn’t fix anything,” Kenton replied.
“I noticed,” I said with another smirk. He shook his head.
“You know, if I was going to be up in the air like that, I would want to make damn sure that no matter what I was flying, it had a clean bill of health from the mechanic before I even got it out on the runway. I don’t even know if I would want to get it up to speed enough for takeoff before I knew without a doubt the thing wasn’t going to fall apart on me in the air.”
“Right,” I said. “But, when you have a mechanic you can’t get a hold of unless you’re face to face and he doesn’t come in on time on a Saturday, you start to wonder if he’s even going to show up at all, then you start to think that it’s not that big of a deal if the plane’s only got one propeller, and with it in the back of the shop like that, you can imagine that it was looked at before it was put back with the others, and the list goes on.”
“You’re just listing all the reasons why you might have gotten yourself killed today,” Kenton shot back. “And what would I do? Come in to look at this damn thing and find out you have it smoldering out in the middle of a field somewhere.”
“If you mean because I crashed the thing, that means I would be smoldering out in that field too, right?” I asked with a look of mock horror on my face.
“Right, if you didn’t take the time to let me fix it before you took it out. You know, like any real person would have?”
I shook my head. “Way to make my death sound like the world’s biggest inconvenience in your day!”
“It would have been!” Kenton continued with the joke. “I didn’t want to come in today. I only did it because I figured you would want to be able to take it out this afternoon, so here I am, being all sacrificial and whatnot, and I come in to find you didn’t even wait to see if the thing was fixed before you took it up and out! If you did wind up smoldering in a field, that’s on you. And you would owe me for getting up on my day off and coming in just to make you happy.”
“Gee, I would have to make a personal appearance at my funeral to thank you for your time and efforts,” I said. “I don’t know how you would want me to handle that. Should I have just sat up in the coffin or what?”
