When I was sixteen years old I was full of piss and vinegar - about what I knew, what I was capable of, what I was willing to do - but like most middle class, Midwestern teenagers, it was just that: piss and vinegar. Truth was, I never strayed much - if at all - outside my safe zone, and my rebellions, my surrenders to impulse, were for the most part garden variety and PG-rated. One time I drove my new car (a '77 Chrysler Newport that didn't always start) three hours to Minneapolis, though I'd only been driving for a few months and didn't know Minneapolis (or city driving) at all. This event was on a short list of things I did in outright defiance of my parents back then, and though it was kind of thrilling, when I returned home safely with nothing terrible having happened, as my parents worried might, I couldn't help feeling as relieved as I did vindicated.
News last month that a 16-year-old California kid snuck onto an airport tarmac, climbed into a wheel well of a Boeing 767, and survived a five-hour flight at 35,000 feet to Hawaii deserves some serious inquiry, but also, quite frankly, some serious applause.
The obvious questions, born of grave concern, arose immediately: How was the boy not spotted by someone? Airport security? Baggage handlers? And if this kid could do what he did, what's to stop someone with ill-intent from doing the same thing? And of course, the most obvious: how the hell did he survive subzero temperatures and virtually no oxygen for such a period of time?
The questions about airport security might never be answered. The only proper (and possible) response would seem to be to tighten up the game at all of them (every facet of the airline travel industry should forever be in a state of 'tightening'...) And I'd be willing to bet the boy will have no answers as to how he survived the journey. So far, doctors seem to have done little more than shrug and talk about the possibility (however unlikely) that he went into a state of 'hibernation' during the flight, which saved his life.
If I had a chance to sit down and talk to this kid, I'd have just one question, and it would not have anything to do with surviving it physically. I would want to know how he pulled it off emotionally, and psychologically? Where in his psyche did he have to dig, and how deep, to not only figure out how to do it, but then actually do it?
Sitting there waiting for something to happen would be the worst. It's one thing to imagine him getting there, climbing over the airport fence in the dark, approaching the massive aircraft, grabbing hold of an enormous tire and climbing up into the wheel well. But what mysterious force enabled him to stay there, crouched in that cramped, uncomfortable space, heart and mind racing, breaking out in wave after wave of cold sweat, trying to control his breathing, counting the seconds and minutes until take off?
What went through his mind when he heard rummaging and thumping going on in the cabin directly above his head, as the plane was boarded and prepped?
How did he not panic into fleeing - in a jackrabbit sprint back across the tarmac - when he heard the engines fire up for the first time, or when the plane first lurched into motion...?
And what in the name of all that is holy went through his mind in the moment - poised motionless at the head of the runway - when the aircraft first rushed toward take-off speed? Take-offs freak me the hell out when I'm safely buckled into seat 27A!
'One question' can't help but lead to another, and another, and another.
Reportedly, he was homesick and wanted to see his mother in Somalia. Okay, that's powerful stuff, especially when you're a kid, so I guess the impetus is not hard to figure out. But what kept him motivated on the follow through? He's sixteen years old!
At sixteen, no matter how much I missed my mother, I would not have had the wherewithal to even know how to go about plane hopping, much less the stones to actually do it. I'd have tired and given up, or pussied out (to use age-appropriate lingo) really quick.
And what of the prep time required? That alone would be a major undertaking. There clearly needed to be a lot of studying, a lot of careful calculation and plotting, a familiarity with the airport layout, with flight plans and schedules and so forth, to bridge the gap between reading about it and doing it.
At sixteen, I struggled paying attention in gym class and wasn't too keen on concentrating long enough to wrap my head around directions for hooking up a VCR.
Make no mistake, I am not saying what this reportedly 'quiet teen' from San Jose, California did was right. I am neither condoning it, nor dismissing the seriousness of it just because it didn't cause a catastrophe (which it easily could have). But man, there's no denying it's impressive. People train for things like this: they train for marshaling their fears of speed, height and distance. They go out of their way to prepare themselves psychologically for the pushing of boundaries through extreme behaviors, extreme sports, and they're usually not sixteen years old when they do.
At sixteen, my sixteen, all the 'piss and vinegar' in the world could not have hidden the fact that I didn't think there were too many reasons to get out of bed in the morning, or that I fully expected there to be cereal (Fruity Pebbles) and cold milk waiting for me downstairs in the kitchen when I did, or that I would get a little bitchy and bratty if there wasn't, and likely use it as an excuse to go back to bed.
