Nuclear Bloopers
I’m with two children, Annika who is eight, and Grady, who is ten. We’re staring at a shiny Starfighter supersonic interceptor at the Aviation Museum in Winnipeg when we meet a very nice man who flew this aircraft in Germany in the 1980s, going 900 miles per hour, 500 feet above the ground. He has soft, saggy eyes and a belly to match. Back in the 80s he could fly twice the length of a football field in one second. He wags like an old Golden Retriever when Grady observes that it must be tricky to navigate when you’re going so fast. Then he pulls out a scratched-up map of Germany with his flight path tracing a river. “I just followed the path of the forests,” he says. The children remain skeptical. His plane was built to carry nuclear rockets. What if he sneezed and accidentally nudged the red button? He shows us the lever he’d pull that would flip the lid off his plane and throw him and his parachute high into safety. Annika and Grady look down at the floor, embarrassed for him. They know it’s hard for old people to admit their pathologies.
Afterwards, the kids and I go for lunch at Boston Pizza and watch a blooper on the TV above the bar. The blooper shows adults assembled to dig the first hole for a grand foundation. The best-dressed adult fills his shovel with mud and flings it over his shoulder – right into the faces of the onlookers. We laugh our heads off.
Annika and Grady engage in a debate: Artificial Intelligence VS Humanism. Annika hates Virtual Reality (she calls it VR). “Robots are going to take over the world." But Grady argues that robots can't do anything we don't tell them to do.
They discuss parents who will, in the near future, implant infinitesimal chips in the heads of their newborns, as was reported by a man who’s currently working on “a giant brain” in China. They wonder: What if the implant goes rogue? What if it turns children into killer drones?
They both have a celiac condition, so I order gluten-free pizzas. They will never feel pain. When the next Starfighter interceptor flies 1500 MPH over their home, the pilot will not sneeze. There will be no pilot. And today or tomorrow, the drones striking the nuclear power plants in Ukraine will not release radiation into the atmosphere. Or if they do, the wind will come from the south that day. No crimes will be committed against them. Not ever. I’m the adult here. The pizza crusts are made of cauliflower.
Grady gets a stomach ache which he manfully ignores though it makes him pale. They decline the dessert I want them to enjoy. Annika forks her small hand over the table to me, throws her head back and announces breathlessly, "Believe me! I'm your biggest fan!" Then she laughs so hard she slides off her chair.
