He loves aviation, so after seeing a movie he suggested we hang out and take a lazy walk at the local airport. We never expected anything out of the ordinary, but when we arrived at the parking lot there were serendipitous signs reading B-17 and B-24. Half the time, I can’t tell between a bird and a plane, so those words meant nothing to me, but it meant a great deal to him. His excitement puzzled me.

It turned out that The Collings Foundation was on a Wings of Freedom Tour, giving rides on these old World War II planes for $350 per person. We watched the B-17 and the B-24 land and take off with sightseers aboard, and the planes were absolutely beautiful.

We waited for a while so we could watch them land a second time, and as we waited we met a World War II veteran, a first lieutenant named William Ryherd who had a really neat display of his old photos and newspaper clippings from the war. The vet and my aviator chatted about stalags and the subtle operational differences between the B-25 and the B-26 (believe me, you would rather be in a B-25 than in a B-26), while I stood there listening and feeling dumb as a doornail.

Later, we watched some more planes land, and he pointed out a Piaggio to me, describing the funny-looking nose wings as a canard.

“Oh,” I said, playing dumb, “you mean like ‘hoisted on your own canard?'”

“That’s petard,” he laughed. “Hoisted on your own petard. Sue the college.”

“What’s a petard?” I asked.

“It’s the point of a spear,” he told me. Hmm… not quite, but close.

This is why I prefer to be around people smarter than me; I learn so much through osmosis, and I can tell jokes with big words and actually get a laugh.

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