(The following is an excerpt from my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane. It can be purchased by clicking on any of the roughly 400 banners adorning this site, or by clicking here. It’s also available on Amazon.
I’ve posted the first 20 chapters (roughly 55 pages of PTSA) on this site. Links to each of those are at the end of this post, or you can download all of them as a pdf by clicking here.
“What do you mean you’ve never voted?”
Despite being seemingly irresistible to everyone I’ve ever met, I’ve never been able to sustain a long-term, lasting relationship.4 It usually came back to that question – the one Jennifer just asked me.
Her phrasing was weird, but they all seemed to do it – the “What do you mean…?” portion.
I’ve tried to think of a thousand million different ways to say it, so they understand better, but always come back to thinking that “I’ve never voted” was about as clear and concise as I could be. What exactly does she think I meant?
“Well. I think this will be our first fight.”
Jennifer had come to visit me from The New York City. After the four hours we spent on that airplane ride together, there was no way we wouldn’t see each other again. Magic is magic, and we’d hit magic on that airplane ride.
Four hours of like, amazing conversation, mixed in with the occasional perfect silence, and even some non-awkward, accidental handholding when I dropped my Entertaining Weekly magazine.
We’d read that issue together, and it was the first time I’d ever done simultaneous, out-loud magazine reading. I’d always felt it a bit taboo, and man…it is. Sultry and seductive doesn’t do it justice.
It didn’t hurt that the cover story was about the Andreanna Marsupial book series – turns out we’re both huge fans.
I tried to play coy when she told me Handsomar Horsebuck was her favorite character. She, in turn, played coy during the Boppin’ Dopplepops article, as some sort of retaliatory flirtation technique.
Anyway, I had name-dropped my brother’s government so I could meet Jennifer at the airplane gate, and the magic picked up right where we’d left off.
We went to airplane baggage claim, got her airplane bag and this awesome pink guitar she’d brought, and…I don’t know – it was indescribable. This was the woman I would marry, hands down, no doubt, 100%.
I carried her to my car, symbolic of her being my future bride, and we left the airplane station.
That’s when everything went bad. Worse than that – it was a disaster. We couldn’t look at each other without it being awkward, and anytime we tried to start a conversation, there was no common ground. If she said the sky was blue, I said it was not blue, and vice versa.
The voting thing was the last straw for her. And for me. We were out of straws. Both of us. Together.
Jennifer stayed for one night, changed her flight, and left. It was by mutual decision – Jennifer and me just didn’t work.
Our love was simply two moments in time – one on an airplane ride, and the second during an airplane station pick-up. That was all it would ever be.
4 – I did have one very serious, sustained, long-term, lasting relationship, but since the girl it was with utterly destroyed my heart, and any chance of having a second sustained, long-term, lasting relationship, I try not to think about it.
Brad Radby’s Foreward, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 31
