I Didn’t Spend 4 Years in Skywriting School to Help Sven Propose to My Ex-Girlfriend
Not why I did it, frankly.
I say this from the bottom of my airborne heart: I’m happy for Sven and Veronica. I really am. As they say, Go with God!
It didn’t work out between Veronica and I. That’s fine. She said I was immature (wrong). But no hard feelings. Happens every day. A million fish in the sky.
But if you asked me if I spent $70,000 and four years of my godforsaken life in skywriting school just to help Mr. Rebound pop the question to my ex-girlfriend? Well, I’d spell out my answer for you: N.O.
It’s not out of bitterness or sour grapes, mind you. My grapes have never been sweeter. The simple fact is, I’m a professional sky writer. I don’t have time for amateur stuff.
And I certainly don’t need it. I’ve gotten all kinds of jobs since skywriting school graduation seven years ago. You may be familiar with my work from “Happy Bday, Mable” (April 15, 2016). I’m also the artist behind “Shop Gordman’s!” (July 4–5, 2018).
But I don’t do it for the money (or the fame). I do it because when I’m up there in the heavens, my mind is on my work. I’m in “the zone.” I don’t have to think about Sven or Veronica — or that lady who cut me in line at Gordman’s, for that matter.
Yet, strong willed as I am, the other fact of the matter is I’ve always had a soft heart. So when Sven offered to double the money to spell out “Will U Marry Me?” among the clouds, his pathetic desperation pushed me toward my greatest weakness: compassion for my fellow man.
I still wasn’t happy about it, of course. I took the money (cash only) and made sure to remind Sven that this piddly side job wasn’t what I went to skywriting school for. I also had no intention of doing the job very well. I might mistakenly write, “Will U Merry Me?” “Oops,” I’d say. You never know what can happen at that altitude.
Then Sven (the brute) breaks it to me that he wants to be in the plane with me when I do the job. Not a chance! Then he offers to triple the money and I figure I’ll let him think he won this round; maybe it’ll make his head inflate to a normal size.
I just don’t know what Veronica sees in him. Is it his “charity”? His devotion to “family”? His passion for “hospitality management”?
It frankly boggles the mind. Let’s see Sven perfectly execute a cursive “G” 90 miles in the air. Don’t think so!
So anyway the “big day” comes (yawn) and it’s time to lug this Neanderthal up to the sky to trick Veronica into the biggest mistake of her life. What a waste of a perfectly good 3 p.m. Wednesday.
I get in the cockpit and this nudnick jumps up in the seat next to me like some goddamn golden retriever going to the park. Not on my plane! Back seat, Air Bud! Then he starts whining and says the backseat is filled with laundry and smells like ass and do I live in this plane?
Some people just don’t know how to quit while they’re ahead. Long story short, he offers me $50 extra to sit up front and I figured I’d be the bigger man and let it slide. But that’s strike two, chump!
Then we get rolling and he starts looking real nervous. I stifled a chuckle. What an amateur! Green as a gourd. But to be honest, I was starting to sweat a little, too. The plane sure was shaking a lot more than usual. The last time I’d actually flown it was around July 5, 2018, and that was without the extra 140 pounds of wet laundry in the back.
But there’s no turning back now and we approach the spot where Veronica was asked to wait down below for a “surprise.” It’s the dog park where they supposedly first met. A patchy field covered in greyhound doo-doo? Fitting, I thought.
That’s when the left wing fell off. We watched it float down to the ground like a leaf.
Sven looks at me.
“No sweat,” I say, sweating. “That’s why I always fly with two.” I begin wracking my brain. They teach you how to handle situations like these in skywriting school, but to be honest, I barely passed that class. It was held during Shark Week. What do they expect?
My mind was blank. I looked at the controls. They might as well have been the ending to Inception. I looked back at Sven. I couldn’t believe I was going to die next to Napoleon Numbnuts. I could see the headlines: “Two Dead in Unlicensed Plane Crash Flown By Tax Evader” (I figure by that point they’ll have uncovered that).
I decide to surrender to fate and go limp, slumping in my seat.
“Goodbye, Sven,” I mutter. “I’ll see you in hell.”
We begin to nose-dive. Then, when all seems lost, I feel Sven reach over and grab the control stick thingy from me.
I look up at him and he looks me dead in the eyes.
“We’re going to be OK,” he says, trying to seem courageous. “We’re going to get through this together!”
He somehow manages to yank us back up and level the plane. He even managed to hold my hair back for me as I vomited eggrolls all over the floor (my hair is down to my waist).
“Now,” Sven says shakily as I finish my eggroll deposit and swish some Listerine. “Can you tell me how to land this thing?”
I looked long and hard at this oaf with the nerve to fly my plane and ask me intimate questions about my work. Do I show up where he works and ask him how to manage a hotel when he’s busy?
But then another thought occurs: Sven hadn’t judged me. He believed in my abilities to land this plane despite the fact that I was clearly as lost as he was up here. He also didn’t say anything about the WWII-era pistol I had on the dashboard.
I hated to admit it, but Veronica had chosen well. Sven was brave and considerate. And yes, he was also a fool. But he was my fool now. And just like that I felt a burst of determination swell up in my chest: I had to bring him home to Veronica. But first: we had a proposal to complete.
“No,” I say.
“No what?!” Sven yelps.
“No I’m not going to tell you how to land. Not before we do what we came here to do. Now listen closely. I’m going to tell you how to write a ‘W’ in the sky.”
“Really, that’s alright,” Sven stutters. “I promise you can keep all the money, let’s just land.”
As I suspected, Sven is a terrible student. But we spent the next half an hour muddling through, nonetheless — me with my limp arms directing Sven all the way like Houston to Apollo.
We ended up spelling, “UILl MMURRRRRDRRR!…..” Not a bad skywriting job, considering the circumstances. Then we crash.
I wake up amid a fiery wreckage and instincts kick in and I begin choking Sven. He slaps me out of it and we both try opening the hatch but it was pretty stuck. For the third time that day, I laid back and resigned myself to death (had also bit my tongue that morning eating eggrolls). But then, like a guardian angel, Veronica appears. We’d crashed in the forest next to the dog park, apparently.
Veronica manages to pry the hatch open, then grabs the plane’s fire extinguisher that I forgot about and sprays us both down.
“Veronica,” I say quickly, wiping the foam and slobber from my face. “Will you marry me? Don’t answer me yet, just think about it.”
“No?” she says.
“Hey!” Sven yells, determined to be the desperate third wheel to the end. Veronica’s eyes widen as she finally recognizes him under all my charred underwear.
“Oh my God!” she says. “Sven!”
She embraces him.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?!” she says.
“I’m so sorry,” Sven says. “I love you so much.”
“I love you,” she says, holding him tighter. “And the answer — in case you were still wondering — is yes.”
As I sat and watched Sven and Veronica bask in the light of their love for each other, brighter even than the flames themselves, I suppose you could say I finally realized why I spent four years slaving away in skywriting school…so I wouldn’t have to watch this mushy crap.
Then I hear the sirens and gracefully make my exit, throwing Sven the plane keys and the pistol and running naked into the forest.
And if you’re wondering why I’m taking the time to write all this in the sky, it’s to tell you to never lower your standards…and also to Shop Gordman’s!
