OMG

In a world of predictable surprises, one of the more humbling is how clueless any of us can be in unfamiliar circumstances. This includes bright successful folk like our usual clientele, most of whom can get around by themselves, hold a rational conversation, and even balance a checkbook while chewing gum. Turns out though, all it takes to lose track of the most obvious detail is too much information clouding apprehension and fuddling comprehension. After that it's a question of what passes the filter or what doesn't, with common sense by itself perhaps counting for less than we suppose.

(To preclude offending readers of any age or gender let's say only that the subject of this story was a reasonably intelligent adult – who knows, it could have been you).

We'd enjoyed an ordinary intro flight through our local mountains and glided back to the airport with everything normal right on down to the landing pattern. Our guest seemed satisfied and now eager to be back on firm ground, but as we rolled from base leg to final, out of nowhere they shrieked, "OMYGOD! The tow plane's gone!" No kidding. What do you say to something like that? You can't say what you think, that would be downright rude. To be fair, our nose had been pointed in every direction many times during the flight, with so much to see they completely forgot about that other airplane until long after it flew away. I blurted that it landed a half hour ago, but apparently they believed that put us in sudden big trouble. So... This gave me three things to do in less than a minute.      1 camouflage the involuntary smirk in my voice     2 kindly explain what should be obvious to anyone     3 prove the point by landing well. The first part I may have failed. The second part is my daily schpeel but takes more than a minute, so time ran out (which time often tends to do). And the third, well that's always a matter of interpretation isn't it? It's hard to fully concentrate when you're stifling laughter in the flair. Grade me on the curve.