CUPCAKE

“Good morning, cupcake,” the raspy voice crackled through the overhead speaker. “Shouldn’t you be home bakin’ cookies?”

My mom taught me to bake Toll House chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag when I was about eight years old. I loved baking them, feeling so grown up, almost as much as I loved tasting them hot and gooey straight out of the oven. But, I preferred standing on the observation deck at Stanford Field with my dad, watching the planes come and go, imagining exotic destinations and exciting adventures for the pilots and passengers. I hoped that someday I’d jump off the high dive into an adventure of my own. Dad’s childhood dream of becoming a pilot was, as he said, knocked in the head, when he learned that he was colorblind.

After President Reagan fired the air traffic controllers who went on strike in 1981, I took the entrance exam and joined thousands of other previously ineligible applicants willing to work for $50,000 a year. Until the first day of orientation at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, where I joined 300 other prospective rookie controller trainees, I knew little about controllers or the job. My first homework assignment was to memorize on sight 100 different aircraft on a multiple choice test. I considered packing and going home, but, refusing to admit failure, I carried on. Each phase of training during my 3 months at the Academy grew progressively more difficult, and more students washed out with each phase. The stress manifested differently in each of us. One guy built an altar to Buddha in his apartment; several drank heavily; I threw up every day before, during and after class and ate as little as possible to minimize my nausea.

After 8 weeks of academics, we moved into a mock radar room and began running problems, meaning we simulated live air traffic situations with an instructor plugged in beside us grading us. Some had quit jobs, sold businesses, sold homes, and brought families to Oklahoma, believing, as we had been told, that they were being trained to do the job. The FAA obscured the pass/fail rate at the Academy, which would have magnified the fact that we were participating in a screening process, the point of which was to weed out anyone whose ability to endure the facility training program appeared questionable.

We were in class 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Study groups met in each other’s apartments, where we wallpapered every empty space with maps and rules that we then etched into our brains. More than once, I woke myself sitting straight up in bed saying, “Descend and maintain four thousand.”

On the last day in Oklahoma City, we gathered in the assembly hall where three months before we’d been sent off in groups of 30 to begin Phase 1 training. Some knew for certain that they’d passed; many knew for certain that they’d failed; and many others waited to be told. The final written test we’d taken two days prior could make or break a potential career. The Academy Director stood at the podium and asked that each person leave the room as his/her name was called. The names he announced were of those who had failed, offering them up for one last public humiliation. When the last name was called, less than 100 of us remained in the room.

I’d been in Oklahoma City for Thanksgiving, Christmas, my uncle’s funeral, New Year’s Eve, my birthday, and finally it was over. Part of me exhaled a sigh of relief, and part of me knew the journey had just begun. 16 of the original 300 of my input were earmarked for Memphis Center, and 3 of us had passed. During the next 2 years of endless, grueling training, 1 washed out in the radar lab. Buddy and I made it. A few months after he was through training and fully certified, Buddy’s father, who lived in Louisville, had a heart attack, and Buddy went back home to be near him. He transferred to Stanford Field Radar Approach Control, where I had stood as a child on the observation deck with my dad, imagining exotic journeys.

I took another sip of coffee before I picked up the handset and responded to the pilot, my first call of the day. Blistering retorts to his “empty kitchen” remark raced through my mind.

I lifted the handset to my mouth and keyed the mike.