When I was ten years old, I saw a made-for-TV movie, The Day After, a story about the before, during, and after events of a nuclear war, told from the perspective of a small Missouri town.

Seeing that movie, and the graphic images of instant death, both of people and of culture, terrified me. This was in 1983, at the time Reagan was still in a face-off with Russia, feeling out Andropov, so soon after Brezhnev died, and we were all on edge about full scale nuclear war.

Being in 5th grade, I was terrified. What I did know came from TV and movies, and movies like Wargames taught me that if a nuclear war did come, we the people wouldn't know until we saw the flash, glowed, and disappeared in a flying firestorm.

I started to worry whenever I heard a plane go overhead. Our home was in the landing path for the Burbank airport, and whenever I'd hear the roar of the jets in the sky, I'd hold my breath and stay still, praying that it would pass overhead, and that it wasn't Soviet-launched destruction from half a world away.

I was literally incapacitated for months, with these feelings going through me several times a day, never weakening. I wondered if I'd ever feel at peace again, and I was sad that ten years old is a young age to lose your idealism.

Then one Saturday morning, after months of this prolonged terror, I had a realization: Nuclear warheads don't have engines, and they travel faster than the speed of sound when they're approaching their target. I wouldn't hear it coming, and I probably couldn't see it coming either. In a rare feat of logic overcoming emotional response, my fear was instantly gone. Thereafter, whenever I heard a plane I knew that it was a good plane full of friendly people, and didn't portend anything more than people moving safely from place to place. I was still worried about the threat of war, but now I could be worried in a more abstract way, and the adrenaline-fear didn't return because there wasn't a trigger to set it off.

...

I haven't thought about this in years, but as I was getting ready to go to sleep last night I thought I should take advantage of the no-fly order and look out my windows, from which I have a view of the landing pattern of both the Oakland and San Francisco airports, as this would likely be the only time I'd see a completely clear sky.

Off in the distance, I saw a flashing light, moving slowly across the sky, and it was a little jarring. Of course logically I knew that it must be a military aircraft, or at least one cleared to fly, but at the same time I wondered, when I'm back at work today, sandwiched between the flight path of commercial jets leaving from San Jose International, and the Moffett Air Force Base, what feelings will the scream of jet engines stir in me now?