My God

I was quite a delinquent student. Since I went to Alliance, one of my main fields of delinquency was French. Mrs. Goren was a small middle-aged French teacher who knew to appreciate my incompetence.

At the end of yet another morning break, Mrs. Goren entered the classroom, climbed up the podium, and shot an unsatisfied look at the board... Nodded and went on to look for a piece of chalk. All across the board, the word MERD was plastered in great big capital letters. Mrs. Goren took a piece of chalk, went to the end of the board, added the letter E then turned back to the class, her eyes searching for me. She gave me a serious stare that could not hide a mischievous underlying teasing smile and said in her high pitch voice, "Tsfi, even MERDE (shit), you are incapable of spelling correctly..."

Ten years passed, and I found myself strolling the skies with an F16 strapped to my butt when the air controller sent me to check out an unidentified inbound aircraft. I locked on the target and made eye contact just as he crossed the border into the Negev desert. A small flimsy Cessna who did not answer on the radio and flew so slow I had to go around it in circles to stay with it. I made several attempts to draw the pilot's attention, but he went on his way, oblivious to my frantic presence bouncing all around him. This flying circus could have been entirely innocuous if it wasn't for the fact that we were gradually coming closer and closer to the little town of Mitzpe Ramon. In Israel, of all places, this kind of dynamics can very quickly deteriorate, sucking the humor out of the situation and leaving it with death and distraction.

What if the pilot decides to crash the plane right into Mitzpe Ramon, now looming over the horizon? True, chances are low… why would anyone decide to kill himself, let alone by crashing his plane into the main street of a god-forsaken desert town in the blistering midday heat? It is suicide attack 101 to make sure you are not the only one getting killed. In Mitzpe, in the midday heat, not only will he die alone, there will be no one to inform the 72 virgins on his valor and usher him into the garden of Eden. Still, I had a growing concern that if he kept getting closer, I would eventually be instructed to help the little plane and his uncooperative pilot meet mother earth... and that did not suit me well. Not at all.

At this stage, it had become apparent that the pilot's vision wasn't one of his stronger qualities. So... I made a very close pass right in front of his nose with full afterburner to make the point. So close, in fact, that I was sure that if he would not see, he would hear. If not hear then feel and if not feel he is sure to smell (the burning fuel). Nothing... Just as I thought my next move should be with the cannon, the radio came to life.

The Cessna pilot uttered two words in high pitch voice with a heavy French accent, "Mon Dieu," then went silent again. The air controller asked if I understood what the Cessna pilot was saying. My answer was that he is extremely sorry, that he had internalized the gravity of the situation and is asking, from the bottom of his heart, that we do nothing and let him turn back... an action that is already underway. "All that he said in two words?" the air controller sounded skeptical. "Affirmative," I said as I was watching the Cessna turn back, limping away slowly. If you had had a French teacher like Mrs. Goren, you would have known… I thought but said nothing and turned back for landing.

For the lot of you who did not go to Alliance nor had the privilege of knowing Mrs. Goren, "Mon Dieu" is "My God" only in French. Mrs. Goren was a very verbal woman who could carry a complicated message. Every now and then, she would scream "Mon Dieu" in a high pitch voice and perfect French accent; more often than not it happened after I did something stupid, that drove her out of her mind. Ms. Goren and I always understood each other. Something did sink in after all.