R.I.P. TN Flygirl, Jenny Blalock

https://theaeroinsider.com/tnflygirl-accident-ntsb-report/

There are real-time domains in the world, where not only the (theoretical) knowing of something amounts to life and death, but also the actual execution of that something counts. Flying an airplane as pilot in control is indeed one of those things.

One of the countless advantages of being male in our culture, is that often one learns about real-time domains as a young person in sports, where the failures humiliate, but do not kill. I was a failure at baseball in Little League and on the sandlot, repeatedly and so much so that I learned to avoid sports in particular and later, real-time pursuits in general. I still hate driving a car, and somewhat resent our culture's virtual requirement of that real-time skill as a thing that any normal person can (and must) do safely. In our family Sue drove the car as much as we could manage while the kids were still at home, and still drives over-the-road when we visit out of town, or go for driving vacations.

Maybe TN Flygirl should have played some league softball before she became a paragon and advocate of flying for everyone on YouTube, on Instagram and elsewhere.

As the NTSB report explication above makes clear, Jennie Blalock stepped out a "bridge too far" in her decision to fly her Beechcraft 35-C33 Debonair with her father aboard, when she was still quite seriously (and unbeknownst to herself) "behind her aircraft" as instructors sometime term not being fully in control and ready for anything in a new and complex machine of the air. That learning was her last, fatal to her and her beloved father.

HOWEVER, perhaps it can be a lesson for the rest of us muggles in our struggle to master the game of life itself and living well given our abilities, strengths, and perhaps particularly our weaknesses. I am good (and even close to great in some) distinctly NOT real-time things: Learning and teaching and programming computers-- finding and fixing those bugs before the program is released into the wilds of real production, for example.

It is up to each of us to find and live those things in which we have what economists call “comparative advantage”— and if such things are real-time things, not to get out beyond what our skills actually are, while still stretching and pushing our skills to the best we might be.

Perhaps we could reflect on this, and say a small prayer for our late Jennie Blalock, TN Flygirl of some note, with us for too short a while in this our vale of tears.

Simple mistakes, done in the wrong context, can be actually and truly fatal. Would that it were not, but...