(In Memory of Richard Mayberry: great swimmer; wonderful fellow)
July 18, 2014
I did it again – I flew across the pond in tourist class and exposed myself to God knows how many countless germs, bacteria and viruses. Those sardine-packed, trans-oceanic flights are a veritable incubator for all sorts of things – put perhaps that which doesn’t kill you – makes you stronger?
Talking about getting killed on a commercial airliner – it’s literally murder flying Malaysian Airlines these days! Are they snake-bit or what?!
By now it should be obvious to everyone that the U.S. was somehow responsible for the disappearance of the first Malaysian airliner; since our surveillance technology of the downed Malaysian jetliner demonstrated that we can pick gnatshit out of a haystack. Hell! Anderson Cooper’s show published a nice photo of the suspected triggerman just hours after the incident!
And while I’m not exactly sure if this second Malaysian air tragedy was an accident or something more insidious – I was bemused by the fact of how long it took to determine whether-or-not there were any Americans on board. There is something called the ship manifest which pretty much details who is on board and what their nationality is. Just about everyone else on the plane was listed pretty quickly – why did it an inordinately long time to determine if any Americans were on board?
But I digress (again): I was writing about those germs that are fed and bred aboard commercial airliners (those germs that might someday incubate into a super virus or bacterium). American customs always asks you if you’ve been on any foreign farms or were in touch with the local livestock and/or vegetation. I answer “No,” each time — even though I always visit my close friends who own farms with critters.
When I ponder our contagious association (aboard the flying petri dishes), I am reminded of the storyline of the current planet of the apes series and the virus that wiped out most of the human race. Ironically, I lost an old swimming teammate to that little ol’ malaria-carrying mosquito this time across-the-pond…
My swimming buddy’s family lived across the street from the Grey High School swimming pool; and, when our coach, Tom Connell, decided that we would have triple sessions (invariably during holiday breaks when I would join my old team [in from the U.S.]) – we would always go across the street to Richard’s place where his Mum would cook us eggs, bacon, sausages and toast: to re-energize us and get us ready for the mid-day practice. After being filled-to-our-gills by Mrs. M, we would lie about in various stages of consciousness listening to Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” and Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s “Brain Salad Surgery” (at least in ’75 and ’76 – my memory is dim on the listening fare of ’77 and ’78). The Mayberry home became the “team home” and somehow this all added up to Richard eventually becoming a minister.
And while ministering in Kenya this very May, he was felled by a mosquito. For some reason, he had either neglected, or forgotten, to take his malaria pills. Giti and I always ramp ourselves up with Vitamin C before we fly – hoping to beef-up our immune systems to ward-off anything that might be incubating in the flying petri dish…we’ve walked off the plane too many times with whateveritwas that was going around…
…who would think that in-this-day-and-age, malaria can still kill? You would think that among the wondrous developments in medicine – some antidote might have been developed to counteract malaria.
But it hasn’t…
…and as plane crashes or car crashes can always happen when you step out into the world: which I like to call “In the Line of Life”; so too, can “acts of nature” deprive us of life: Richard reminded me (as did the Malaysian air tragedy) – that we must live each day as if it were our last – because it very well could be. I can’t allow getting and spending to become my focus: there are other things that can also incubate in the petri dishes: things we call home and family; values that should be just as capable of going as viral as nasty stuff: love and honor and comradarie come to mind. That might explain those deep drawn out conversations so many of us have on planes: we unconsciously pour ourselves into the other, knowing that the conscience in resonance might be the receptacle of our last will and testament.
Farewell RM, I’m betting you are one-of-the-fastest breaststrokers in that heavenly pool…