As my flight started its take-off surge the other night, the young man in the next seat crossed himself, touched the knuckle of his thumb to his lips and bowed his head for a moment. I suspect a number of other people on the flight did much the same. What Muslims or Buddhists or Mormons do, I have no idea, but there must be millions who go through similar tiny rituals every day as their plane starts to roar along the runway. And again, as it bumps down at the end of the flight and the engines roar into a reverse thrust.
Since we landed safely, I suppose my devout fellow-passengers thought that their prayers had been answered. Me, I just had a statistically reasonable faith that the guys doing the maintenance checks had done their jobs properly, and that none of them or my devout fellow-passengers had decided that the best way of serving their God was to put a bomb somewhere on the plane.
I thought of my neighbour’s little ritual as I watched a short video clip from the rain-soaked Brazilian coastal resort of Paranagua. It started with the final moments before a certain Father Carli took off in an attempt to break the world record for a multiple helium-balloon flight On his previous attempt on the record he had landed somewhere in Argentina – a valiant effort,but some hours short of what he was seeking.In view of the weather, no doubt all of the people who had blown up the balloons, fastened him into his harness, secured his helmet, checked his radio, prepared his emergency rations, had not only crossed themselves and chanted prayers for his safe return, they had also prayed for the rain to stop
The clip showed the priest saying, in a rather quavery voice, that now the rain had abated, they would go for the record. Father Carli could not bless himself because he was semi-pinioned in a bulky safety suit and tightly strapped into a full-body harness. In its turn the harness connected him to hundreds of gaily coloured helium-filled balloons floating above his helmeted head.
In the next shot we see him being borne aloft by the multi-coloured frog-spawn of balloons. There is then a brief glimpse of a very distant blob sailing away at a considerable height – out to sea. Paranagua’s prevailing wind is normally from the East and Father Carli had expected to be borne inland by the breeze and land in a place that would be handy for the newsreel cameras and his supporters to find him
Sadly – and it is a terrible tragedy for the poor man and the many people who no doubt love him dearly – the whimsical weather-gods played a cruel trick, and after the rain ceased and he had been left to their mercy, they turned the wind to the West and away he sailed, over the sea and over the far horizon. He was 55 miles out to sea when he radioed a desperate plea for a rescue to be organised as quickly as possible. Four days, later, he has still not been found and thousands of brightly-coloured bits of balloon have been washed ashore hundreds of miles to the South.
Now this is an undoubted tragedy, and my heart goes out to everyone involved, not least the priest himself. But, that brief glimpse of his final moments on the ground, and the multi-coloured blob disappearing into the distance, is also blisteringly, stomach-achingly funny.
Had the guy in the next seat not crossed himself as our flight launched itself down the runway, I don’t think it would have struck me in quite the same way. But somehow, the certainty that Father Carli’s tragedy would have been accompanied by a blizzard of prayers and genuflections, not to mention the quaver in his voice as the rain stopped, got to me and I am sorry to say that I laughed out loud for several minutes – and I am still prone to giggle at the memory.
Across the aisle from me the other evening, on that same flight, a young man with earphones was laughing uncontrollably at a Simpsons cartoon he was watching on his laptop. I could see his screen, and his was yelping with delight at a sequence in which Homer and his family are killed off and arrive in Heaven, complete with wings, haloes and flowing white robes to – as it were – die for.
So there it was, for the much-loved Simpsons’ tragedy was – intentionally – totally hilarious. And we all know that when terrible things happen to people on the stage or in movies (think of the hapless burglars in `Home Alone`) audiences of all ages are reduced to helpless laughter.
But, as the Father Carli’s story shows, some real life tragedies can also be irresistibly funny.
It depends a lot on your temperament, of course. I have always thought that all of humanity is divided into two halves. There are those who cannot help but see life as – ultimately – a comedy. And there are those who see life as a tragedy. The same events provoke entirely different responses according to their basic comedy – vs – tragedy orientations.
It is not that those of us in the comedy-camp are callous. We are often extremely compassionate and take many things in life very seriously indeed – high-quality aircraft maintenance and reliable short-term weather reports, for example. But that doesn’t mean we have to be miserable about them.
I take my lead from a famous Scottish wit – in itself an amusing combination of words – a clergyman called Sidney Smith. He was laughing with some friends when a dour fellow-Scot said, by way of greeting, ‘Ah, Mr. Smith, I see you are still treating life as a joke!`
Smith smiled at him for a moment, and then said, ‘ Ah, Mr. Brown, just because I have the good fortune to be make the occasional witty remark, you should not think that I am frivolous. Just as, (A SMILING PAUSE) because you are pompous, sir, you are not necessarily serious. I wish you very good day.`
The world needs many more Reverend Sidney Smiths and far fewer Mr. Browns, don’t you think? I can imagine that if Smith had been asked to go for the world record helium-balloon flight to raise money for a good cause, his response might have been, “You surely cannot be serious!”
