The J3 is a wonderful airplane, old and slow, but lots of fun to fly.  There is no starter.  You have to get out and spin the prop to start the engine — very old school.  Women seemed to love my J3, except that it wasn’t mine; it was a loaner.

Pilots incidentally are often a fairly conservative lot.  Not a great deal of alcohol or drug abuse among us.  Of course, there are glaring exceptions, but most pilots I know learned quickly that mistakes in aviation can and often are deadly.  There are no dented fenders.  I noticed too that doctors seem drawn to flying in considerable numbers.  They often have the best equipment — I never saw a doctor in a J3 — which I gather they can well afford.  And I should add that I never met a woman pilot/doctor, by the way.

They also were involved in many accidents.  Why?  It is complicated, I suppose, but doctors are busy fellows who might find a couple hours of free time, rush to the airport and were soon airborne.  Not a lot of time to practice, as in practicing takeoffs and landings.  No time for that, but in aviation as in medicine, practice makes perfect, or near perfect.  Also, I think confidence is an issue.  For doctors, at least the ones I was acquainted with, were seldom lacking in confidence, and were, therefore, capable of getting into flight situations they may have been completely unprepared for and untrained to deal with.

So my new friend, Ellen, and I dated.  She was open and very upfront with me about her heavy marijuana use.  She claimed she drove better when she was high, reminding me repeatedly of this as she weaved in and out of traffic on the Mystic River Bridge leading into Boston.  I’d hold my breath, and occasionally recommended she slow down.  She seldom did.   But still, I enjoyed Ellen’s company, and went along for the ride for easily a year or more.  I won’t say her drug use drove us apart, but it did not bring us closer together either, which leads me to this (likely unpopular) observation, and query: How many doctors entering the workplace these days have more than a casual connection to marijuana?  I know the same question can be asked regarding alcohol, but I am not asking that question here, and it is, after all, my essay.

My friend and I parted after a time.  She never said as much, but I suspected she found me a bit dull.  She eventually moved back to Virginia, and last I heard, she had wed and had a family.  Good for her.  So no bad ending here.  Maybe that’s what everybody was expecting — what I was leading up to — but you don’t get that.

But I will say this much.  I continue to be a fussy pilot, and when I travel on an airliner, which these days happens less often — I always peek into the cockpit upon entering to see who is sitting in the left-hand seat.  That’s where the pilot in command sits.  I like to see an older man there, a bit stout and maybe balding or gray-haired.  (Please don’t ask me about female pilots.)  I know such a fellow is likely experienced.  He has survived a long time, is my guess.

If I were to find a young Robert Redford-type in that left-hand seat, I would become uneasy and not fully sure of what I was getting myself into.

So the point I am making here is this:  I am clearly discerning as to the skill and condition of an airline pilot, someone I seldom see, so why should I not be really picky when it comes to doctors I select, and whether or not they use marijuana regularly, or even at all?

Raymond Abbott is a social worker.

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