On Friday, I was out with my boyfriend for brunch. We stopped in at a local market and noticed the aerial view. It was of my childhood home, within walking distance of my parents. If you know my hometown, you know that it’s not exactly the most crowded, laid-back spot. We loved it, standing there and marvelling at the scale of it all.
I said, “I wonder how old it is?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Maybe it’s 11 or 12,” I said.
When we left, I was like, “Oh, I have so many questions.” He said, “You gotta talk to my mum. She’ll tell you.”
I got up the nerve to ask: “What were they like?”
“They were really loud.”
I had a feeling that was the first thing they would say. We stopped at the same convenience store and then made our way around looking around – places I never thought to be in the same space as me, at all, but where people dressed all in black and appeared like aliens. At the grocery store, we were busy getting our groceries, and people would be like, “Oh, look at that helicopter!”
Just then, a guy in a suit turned around. He asked, “Hey, what are you doing up there?”
“Well,” I said, “I’m not a pilot, but I just flew one over California.”
“That’s awesome!” he said. He told me he was going to buy a helicopter.
I realised that I didn’t know any of the names of the places that I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about – well, about anything really, other than that people make a living out of it.
We called our dad and told him what we had done. He said, “You’re not a pilot, but you flew over the house you grew up in? That’s awesome!”
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t need to clarify. My dad just said that it was awesome, because he knows how it sounds.
