Life at the speed of sound

<p>Last Saturday I had a vivid recollection from my elementary school days.</p><p>I was playing kickball with my siblings and a bunch of neighborhood kids in the middle of the street on Rose Lane. We were startled by a huge sonic boom. It felt like the ground shook and immediately halted the intense kickball game. I remember we all stood motionless, until one smarty-pants kid — probably, my scientist sister Leta — spouted out the fact.</p><p>“That aircraft caused the sonic boom because it was traveling faster than the speed of sound, approximately 767 miles per hour in air, and created shock waves,” she said.</p><p>I probably said something equally as intelligent since I was three years younger than my teenage sister, Leta, and always attempted to emulate her as an 11-year-old.</p><p>“Yeah!” I parroted, which must have indisputably impressed the neighborhood kids.</p><p>One of the neighborhood kids with young, hip parents broke the ice. “That freaked me out!” they said. We all started laughing, our heart-rates calmed down and the kickball game resumed.</p><p>I remembered the sonic boom because we recently drove two hours south to attend the Thunder Over Louisville airshow and fireworks. I think when the U.S. Navy’s VFA-106 Tactical Demonstration team flew by in their F/A-18 Super Hornets, it reminded me of the sonic booms I heard as a child in the early ’70s.</p><p>Kids today will not likely have the opportunity to hear the game-stopping boom because in 1973 the FAA banned overland supersonic commercial flights because of sonic booms, a law that remains in effect. One pilot interviewed during the airshow noted that he would be flying his fighter jet “as slow as 150 miles per hour and then on another pass right around 750 miles per hour — right on the edge, so as not to shatter any windows.”</p><p>The Hubby, daughters Alex and Phoebe, Jacob and I were among an estimated 500,000 people who attended the phenomenal six-hour air show on the Ohio River followed by the largest fireworks display in America. We laughed nervously when youngest daughter Phoebe joked that they announced a marriage proposal with the wrong names. “They were supposed to say ‘Jacob and Phoebe’, not ‘Jack and Mackenzie,’” she said.</p><p>We joined in by joking, adding, “Jacob (who graduates next month and takes the MCAT this fall) couldn’t afford the skywriters right now, so the cloud of writing left behind the aircraft will just say ‘Phoebe, will yo…”</p><p>What she didn’t know was that Jacob asked us to bless their marriage last fall and he showed us the ring in February. The next day, Hubby, Alex and I headed home, while Jacob and Phoebe took a planned three-hour hiking tour of Mammoth Cave. In the pitch black of the cave, Jacob got down on one knee.</p><p>Phoebe instantly said, “Jacob, get up, don’t do this again, I’ll have a heart attack,” because he had jokingly “practiced” three times prior. But this time he had the ring. This time both their hearts raced like the shock waves of a sonic boom.</p><p>And just like that, life seemed peaceful and calm, while at the same time traveling at the speed of sound. Because wasn’t she just a toddler yesterday?</p>