from the archives, actually last September's Toronto air show. it was a cloudless, sunny and scorching day and the sky was so blue you could weep.
as a toddler, the sound of airplanes greatly terrified me. i have this memory of seeing and hearing the low flying planes with a star-in-a-circle logo and my parents used to tell us stories of how i would faint from fear. during air shows, my father got amusement from my climbing up to his neck in mere seconds the moment i hear the sound of the fighter jets, screaming. of course it didn't help much that we lived near Nichols Air Field, an American military air base and beyond it was the international airport. until i was a teenager, the sound of plane engines revving up all night would give me nightmares. i would wake up drenched in sweat.
when in college i had to travel to Singapore, my father thought that i would have a problem getting on an airplane. i didn't. thankfully the fear just vanished, so i was never a nervous flyer. however, even today, when i would hear one of the old war planes passing overhead (during the yearly air shows), especially these days that wars all over are going on, it makes me a little nervous but not to the point of panicking. somehow, i could distinguish the sound of a commercial plane and the sound of a military jet. maybe i was alive during one of the past wars.
