Air Traffic Control Child Play

When I was a young boy of between 5 and 8 years old, both my mother and my father would allow me to sit in their laps behind the steering wheel and effectively drive the car. Since my legs were too short to reach the pedals, fully commandeering the vehicle was out of the question.

Although I never thought to ask either of them the question, it may have been that they somehow believed they were in control of the overall situation under the simple assumption that they were responsible for operating the acceleration and the braking functions. On the other hand, and even in the absence of having asked the question, neither do I think either of them were actually dumb enough to not realize that things could have suddenly gone horribly wrong if I had “freaked out at the wheel” and suddenly started jerking it back and forth from left to right.

To be sure, with me holding immediate control of the steering wheel and always having the first opportunity to make a sudden reaction or decision when it came to maneuvering the wheel, there would have been little or nothing my parents could have done to prevent me from steering us off the road, or into the path of another oncoming car, should I have suddenly veered off course. Dependent upon the circumstances, the lapse in necessary reaction time on the part of either of them, even if only a quarter second lapse, would have been enough to prevent them from regaining control of the steering by forcing their hands onto the wheel. Additionally, the fact that I was there sitting in their laps would obviously never have helped them to regain their own full control in the first place.

As I recall, my dad was a little apprehensive at first and always kept his hands poised to grab back control of the wheel from me like he was ready to pull the trigger on a gun. However, it was not long after my first steering debut that he began to seriously congratulate me on my apparent proficiency at doing the job and whereas he spontaneously started to relax in his seat.

But nothing ever went wrong with my steering. Could something have gone wrong? Of course something could have gone wrong, but probably not to any greater likelihood than either my mother or father could have made a mistake of their own while driving the car, just the same as millions of such mistakes are made every day by legally licensed car drivers who just got their license a week ago. I mean, I’m not suggesting I was an expert by any means, because any semblance of expertise when it comes to driving only comes from experience. Experience at driving doesn’t come from watching other people drive.

I got better at steering the car and I got better quickly. Both my mom and dad gradually allowed for accelerating a little faster as time went on when they witnessed that I was indeed an intelligent and competent driver who paid close and careful attention to the job of driving.

On the one hand, I obviously had fun steering the car being a small boy, but on the other hand, I was very much aware of the seriousness of what I was doing and that it was necessary for me to ensure that no mistakes were made on my part. I knew that car wrecks were bad, that wrecks kill people and the whole rest of the story.

Here is a not-so-unlikely moral to this story:

At age 13, I was sitting in the passenger front seat of my mom’s car while we were traveling along a two-lane road out in the rural farmland of Northern Oregon. I observed that my mom was apparently day dreaming at one moment where she was gazing off to her left at a barn or something that caught her eye out in the middle of a cow pasture. At the same time, an oncoming vehicle was closing in on us from the opposing lane of traffic and my mom’s lack of attention to the road in front of her was resulting in her starting to drift over in to the opposite lane.

I knew it was a collision about to happen. There was no question. For one thing, although I believe the other driver (a young male) was aware of what was going on (since I could see the whites of his eyes), he was not altering his line of travel to any degree whatsoever. In fact, there was not much he could have done other than to drive off the road on his shoulder and into the adjoining fence line separating him from the cow pasture.

Although I realized my mom was not going to regain her line of vision along the road in time to avoid what would have been a very, very serious head-on collision, there was about a full half-second of reaction time available to me when I knew for certain that I would finally need to put to good use what both my mother and father had long ago allowed me the opportunity to learn in the first place: And that was to momentarily take control of the steering wheel away from her long enough to correct the car back into our lane of traffic and thus avoid an otherwise imminent collision.

I never panicked during the situation, which in large part was due to the fact that I had plenty of time to observe what was going wrong with my mother’s inattention. And on a subconscious level, the other reason I didn’t panic was because I already had a good deal of experience at steering cars, even though I was still three years away from being eligible to acquire a driver’s license.

In understanding what I needed to do upon the realization that my mom was drifting too far over into the other lane and that she did not see the oncoming car, I calmly – and simply – took control of the steering wheel; and with the smoothness and precision of an experienced driver, I gently corrected the line of travel. In fact, since I understood that she would immediately be surprised and momentarily confused to realize that she was not in control of the steering wheel, I lightly kept my hand on the wheel after she had turned her head back to face the road and to furthermore fully acknowledge what I was doing, which was also after making the correction back into our lane. I did this for the benefit of giving her time to completely realize what was going on so that she could more comfortably and safely take back control of her steering wheel. Once I could see that she was in full realization of the situation, I then took my hand off the wheel.

The fact that my mother clearly let me know that she “did not appreciate” having me take control of her steering wheel is sort of a different story. It took her a minute or two before she finally let me know her regretful feelings about the situation, which seriously took me by surprise, since I was more expecting to see gratitude coming from her with the knowledge that I had probably just saved both our lives.

I actually laughed spontaneously when she told me of her disapproval for taking control of the wheel; and I offered to remind her of what she had to already know, which was that we would have hit the car in front of us had I not taken control of the wheel. Unfortunately, a sense of false vanity on her part somehow caused her to presume that avoiding a head-on collision was less important than to preserve her own sense of false pride and ego for being the all-important captain in charge of driving her car. Well, you know, she should have been paying attention to what she was doing if she expected to keep my hands off the wheel in the interest of avoiding a potentially deadly collision.

Here’s the other moral to this story:

Would I have held the personal capacity and wherewithal in my presence of mind to calmly, concisely and accurately take control of the steering wheel away from my mother at that time were it not for the fact that she and my father had long ago allowed me the opportunity to learn the skill of steering when I was a little boy?

That is a definite “no” answer. Experience in driving is what makes a person good at driving, not unlike attaining sure-handed performance skills at any other activity (e.g. playing golf). Had I not been allowed to previously learn those steering skills as a small boy, it is very possible that I would not have even had the confidence to take control of the wheel away from my mother when I needed to, which would have been a very bad situation. But even if I had taken control of the wheel without such learned skills at my disposal, it is certain that my actions would not have been anywhere nearly as smooth and seamless as they were that day in accurately controlling the steering of the vehicle back into our lane of traffic.

So little did my mother ever realize, but all those past years of allowing me to sit in the laps of her and my dad were quite possibly responsible for allowing me to save our lives on that fateful day when I was 13 years old.

Finally, it is at 1,500 words into this dissertation here that the point of this article is to bring into question whether it really was a bad idea for the son of the John F. Kennedy Airport, air traffic controller, to have been allowed the opportunity from his father to speak flight instructions to pilots, including that of the same such past incident apparently involving his daughter.

I heard the tape of the boy played over and over again on the news about as many times as the next person; and my appreciation of the situation is that he was behaving with good conscience and that he was clearly taking the job of giving his directions with a sense of seriousness and responsibility.

Neither do I believe that his immediate sense of wanting to have a little fun by reiterating the words, “Adios amigos,” to the Mexican pilot as being something that detracted from his overall sense of professionalism at performing the job of giving his flight instructions to the pilots. It’s not like he was joking with any pilots about their planes crashing into the ocean, which clearly would have indicated a lack of professionalism for his debut at reciting flight instructions.

Assuming for just a moment that the father to these children knows the children better than you and I know them, and that he knows them well enough to believe in their respective sense of responsibility when it comes to giving such flight instructions in a professional and cohesive manner, then I would have to agree that the father is not mistaken in understanding that his son and his daughter are indeed very bright kids who possess a degree of professionalism and articulation that should be merited and not effectively ridiculed.

Furthermore, not unlike the situation whereby I likely saved the lives of my mother, myself and another driver (or at the very least avoided serious injuries), due to the fact that my parents allowed me to learn those steering skills as a young boy, I clearly believe that allowing this boy, and his sister, the opportunity to give simple verbal instructions to pilots could easily pay dividends to society in the years to come as those children grow into adults and put their learned skills to use in other ways and means.

Specifically, however, was it illegal for the boy and his sister to be giving those instructions to the pilots? What I can tell you is that it was definitely illegal for my mother and father to be allowing me to sit behind the wheel of the car and steer, but I am under the assumption at this point that there is nothing in writing (i.e., written into “law”) that would have forbidden the father to allow his children to give those flight instructions in the first place, perhaps other than to press charges based on any so-called “child labor” laws.

Apparently, though, there at least would not have been any rules and regulations in effect forbidding such air traffic control tower employees from bringing their children to their place of work from the outset. This ideal frankly surprised me to a good degree, since allowing children into a work area is often against the policies of many companies due to certain questions of insurance liability; and in those cases, it is often not a company itself forbidding the practice, but is conversely the policy of the company’s insurer. However, that apparently was at least not the then-current case over there at the JFK Airport up there in the air traffic control tower.

Here’s the thing:

Whether perceived as being right or wrong on any politically subjective or ethical level, if there were no laws or rules currently in force specifically forbidding the children from giving verbal flight instructions to pilots, then I don’t believe the father or anyone else should be prosecuted – or persecuted. In short, chalk it up as a lesson learned and just tell everyone that they can’t do it anymore.

Beyond that, and contrary to popular belief throughout the history of mankind, it really has been the advent of child prodigies (Christ was an example) and other unlikely geniuses in this world who have put civilization on track to where it is today. People used to be beheaded and burned at the stake for claiming that the world was round like a ball, until one day Christopher Columbus did things the hard way by circumventing the globe in a boat and proving that the earth is not flat. Still others were executed for claiming that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around.

Stupidity breeds stupidity. Unfortunately, most of the people on the planet are none to smart, and there are a relatively very small number of super smart people culling around the rest of us. Were it not for genius, though, and the willingness of people to take chances and break down barriers, then we would all be lucky at this point if we knew how to rub two sticks together enough to start a fire.

Child prodigies abound throughout the history of mankind. A Wikipedia article sums up a definition for the prodigal child as follows:

“A child prodigy is someone who at an early age masters one or more skills at an adult level.[1] One heuristic for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 15 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding field of endeavor.[1][2] The giftedness of child prodigies is determined by the degree of their talent relative to their ages. Examples of particularly extreme child prodigies would include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in music, Judit Polgár in chess, Carl Friedrich Gauss and John von Neumann in mathematics, Pablo Picasso in art, and Saul Kripke in philosophy.[3] There is controversy as to at what age and standard to use in the definition of a prodigy.”

The following is the link to the Wikipedia article. It provides a seemingly surreal listing of child prodigies dating back to the beginnings of recorded history, many of whom have performed seeming miracles within society. Where would society be today of these children had been chastised and prevented from working their respective miracles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_prodigy

If it turns out that the FAA ends up terminating the employment of the father to these children, thus likely rendering him incapable of even collecting unemployment insurance benefits and furthermore lending potential to landing the whole family square in the streets alongside millions of other unemployed and homeless people, then that action certainly won’t do our society any good. That sort of action can only hurt this society in the short run and also in the long run.

The children could easily grow up learning to despise their father and believe that he’s a worthless idiot; while at the same time many potential valuable opportunities will be lost to view the future development of these children. The children would also be highly likely to take on a very dim view regarding their own sense of self esteem.

There is nothing to be gained from destroying this family over something that didn’t cause anybody any harm and that actually provided (or could have provided) a positive learning experience for those children.

In the future, it should be a simple solution to use the clauses of “insurance liability practices” in forbidding children and other non-essential persons from entering the air traffic control towers in the first place; and it is frankly mind-boggling to me that the insurance companies representing the commercial airline didn’t manage to think of that idea some 20 years ago or more.

Give the kid(s) a scholarship to attend college so they can grow up to follow in the professional footsteps of their dad, if that is what they think they would like to do. Everyone can get on with life in a positive manner and who knows, the boy and/or his sister may just end up having the opportunity save the lives of someone else in the future – or to distinctly benefit society in other ways – due to their early childhood experiences made possible by their father that many of us would cynically suggest should never be the subject of any early childhood learning curve (e.g., steering a car in the laps of your mother and father at 5 years old).

In the meantime, try not to dwell too much on the fact that Osama bin Laden and his clan are probably drinking beers, smoking cigars and laughing their butts off right about now.

But things could always be worse…