A formative memory of my childhood is standing on the street in front of my house in Staten Island. It was summer. Late afternoon. I already had the overactive imagination that would come to serve me later as a screenwriter. Sometimes I think it was put to better use back then, as I didn’t understand what constraints or limitations were. Certainly none that you’d find in a POH.
I was a six-year-old playing alone on the sidewalk when I heard the sound of a jet overhead. It must have departed KJFK, as it was still low enough for me to recognize it as a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar. I couldn’t make out which airline, but it was flying into the sunset. I stood and stared until it disappeared over the horizon. I remember being struck by the fact that there were people on it, and that they were all going somewhere. I had recently become aware that there were many other humans inhabiting the planet and that they all had stories of their own. In the same way an infant comes to understand object permanence, I had become aware of the fact that my life was not located at the center of the universe.
