I should’ve never downloaded that “see what airplanes are flying over your house” app to my smartphone. Oh, I thought it was a good idea at the time, but it wasn’t. Now, instead of keeping a sharp focus on the pile of dirty dishes I seem to always be washing, I spend most of my time wishing I could be up there with those daring aviators, flying off to the far ends of the world.
Speaking of, there goes American Airlines Flight Number 2309 to Pittsburgh. It’ll be there long before lunchtime. And there goes a Delta Airbus heading to Salt Lake City from Fort Lauderdale. Oh, and howdy there, Air Canada Flight 1030. I hope you enjoy your trip to Toronto. No, don’t mind me. I’m just scrubbing on a pot that I forgot about yesterday. You’ll probably be landing long before I’m done.
And do I drop everything I’m doing whenever I hear some contraption flying over my house? Of course I do. Not literally, of course, but I grab my phone and head outside just to see what I can see. The other day I scrambled outside at what sounded like a low-flying Piper Cub. It was my neighbor’s leaf blower. How disappointing. 
Me in my younger days, when I knew how to fly.
My wife asked me what I was doing. I showed her the app. It was at that moment I had created a monster.
“I couldn’t go to sleep last night because a very sick person out of Idabel was care-flighted to Dallas,” my wife told me several days later. “A new mother had a difficult delivery and the baby needed emergency care.”
To which I replied: “Do we know them?”
“No. I like to watch the planes and helicopters on the app, and sometimes I make up stories about who they are and why they’re going to where they’re going. But I could’ve been wrong about the baby. The mother may have been the one who needed care.”
A monster, I say.
Did I ever tell you how my wife buys vintage photos at estate sales, frames them, then makes up backstories for them? She calls them our InstaFamily. There are so many InstaFamily photos around our house that it’s gotten to the point I don’t know who belongs on our family tree and who doesn’t.
This airplane app fixation is just the next step in our “there’s nothing good to watch on television anymore, so we might as well make up our own stories” evolution of life.
“Wake up! Wake up! There’s a military drone flying over our house! What have you done?”
This abrupt awakening happened at 3:17 a.m. on Tuesday. To say I was a bit confused would be an understatement.
“I’ve been watching this drone — it’s a military Q-9 Reaper — I’ve been watching it all night and it keeps flying over our house. What have you done?”
Not wanting to aggravate the situation, I decided not to tell her that I was a former triple double agent under witness protection — had been for years (Farr is not really my last name) — and that I had enough damaging information in my head that could bring down several governments if they ever found me. Which, I guess they had. Cover broken. Time to run. Tell the kids I love them.
Instead, I suggested it was probably just a routine training mission. Young airmen learning how to fly the thing. Nothing to worry about. Now, relax, have some hot tea, go to sleep. You’ll feel much better in the morning — if we survive.
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