Today the Internet Movie Database reminded me that among the other news of the weekend, there was a "milestone" that was overlooked. This weekend marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Top Gun.
Please travel back in time with me, before couch jumping Tom Cruise and the Anthony Edwards' ER brain tumor to my sixth grade self, who, along with my best friend Lesli, was obsessed with this film. While I do remember most of the film fondly, in my opinion the real stars of that movie are the planes.
For four years after I saw this movie, before I met something called Geometry, I wanted to grow up and design jets, get a private pilot's license (even then I knew my vision prevented a commercial one) and make my life about airplanes. I even won my very first writing award, in part, for a poem called "The Jet."
Do I think that version of myself would be disappointed with my current life? Hmmm...I mean I can't fly a plane, and the closest I've come to designing one is the models I made back in junior high. Still, that little girl is around and evident in the fact that I once managed to write a well received graduate history paper on the F-117 Stealth, the giddiness I felt at finally making it to Seattle's Museum of Flight (the photo below) and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and the fact that I'm delighted to have married a man who is at least as fascinated by planes as I am.
That little girl is also the reason that every time I fly, no matter how routine it's become in the last year, there's always a moment when I look out the plane's window at the stunning blue sky, stare at the clouds below and the glint of sun on the wing and have an "I can't believe I'm really flying moment." So while I may not design airplanes, thanks to Top Gun, and eleven-year-old me, I still think they're pretty darn cool.
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