It drives me nuts that people romanticize it and say oh maybe she was a spy, oh maybe she pulled a pre-Elvis and faked her death to escape her horrible, fame-riddled life. A woman ballsy enough to do what she did in a man’s world, just a few years after the suffragettes won the vote, the whole time sporting a short and foppish a haircut was confident and wouldn’t have throw her life away to secretly marry some billionaire. No, Amelia Earhart met her maker on that fateful July day because she was an idiot who picked an idiot navigator and together they got spectacularly lost in the limitless sea.
I had to do a report on her when I was in the fourth grade. I got rather fascinated with the whole scenario. My research spawned many Amelia Earhart games, all of which ended with terrific and emotional deaths, because even then I thought she was an idiot. Sometimes I’d rope my brother Alex into playing the part of Fred Noonan the Moron Navigator, but often he declined because things could get heated in my magic marker detailed cardboard cockpit.
After I dramatized the final moments of the circumnavigational attempt, my mother would sigh and hand me a sandwich, or an apple, or a cookie, because what else could she do? With a mouthful of grilled cheese I would gleefully recount the day’s crash, which I always tried to spice up with new details. Sometimes a heavenly shaft of light blinded me and I lost control of the craft, and other times an equipment malfunction sent me into a fiery tailspin. In the end there was always a wonderful crash and then I was on to my mid-afternoon snack.
Around fifth grade I discovered Masterpiece Theatre, which lead me to re-enact sitting room dramas with Alex, who enjoyed a quaint British story much more than the Earhart saga. Hats were made, letters were written, and our conversations were halted as our stuffed elephant servant brought us afternoon tea. Despite my best efforts, these stuffy imaginings were lackluster in comparison to the good old days with Amelia and her plane.
Some days my mind still turns to that vast sky and rivets on silver wings. I’ll call Alex and recount a heroic flight, most recently the one in which we parachuted from the craft, bed sheets in hand and dog treats attached to our shirts, only to be eaten alive by our sea monster beagle mix. It was ghastly. There were crumbs everywhere.
*This story is the result of a creative exercise in which you pick a random word from the dictionary and have 45 minutes or so in which to write something inspired by said word. You'll know it when you see it because it'll be labelled "word."
*This story is the result of a creative exercise in which you pick a random word from the dictionary and have 45 minutes or so in which to write something inspired by said word. You'll know it when you see it because it'll be labelled "word."
