I'd sure like to be at home with P today. He took today off. It's a "war day" which is sort of like a vacation day, but it's to watch the war.
It's not the war, per se, that he's interested in. It's the planes. The aircraft they've launched to deliver the missiles.
When P and I were first dating, we went camping with a small group of friends. One of the guys had brought with him a deck of about 50 flash cards. On one side of the cards were pictures of airplanes. Mostly fighters from the wars. Each card had a picture of a different airplane. On the other side of the card, was the type of plane pictured, and whatever nicknames it had, and it's version.
The guy who brought the cards bet P that he couldn't name half of the airplanes. P took the bet. One by one the pictures were presented, and P knew every single one of them. Except for one - it was an Italian plane that he got the nickname wrong on. But as far as I could tell, American, British, Japanese, Russian, you name it. P knew airplanes.
I was mightily impressed at this display of knowledge, as you can imagine. And so began my attempt to understand the passion underlying this knowledge. It wasn't hard to figure out. Since boyhood, airplanes have been P's first love. His true passion. He knew from a very early age that he wanted to be an aero engineer. There are very few people I know who have actually followed their childhood dream. P is one of those few.
So it is a tremendous interest in the technology and the aircraft that glues P to the television today. And tonight when I get home from work, he will re-cap the day's events, adding special emphasis and characterization when he describes the aircraft and how they carried out their missions last night.
You really should hear him. It's most impressive. And passionate.
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