https://fivedotoh.com/2022/01/15/fowc-with-fandango-disaster/

What a disaster her date could have been.

They were meant to go on a sky diving experience, but they never got off the ground. It all started off as a joke. Make it a day they would remember, but it was for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t even jumping out of a real plane, but during training, he couldn’t even face the headset. She understood, but this was important to her. Something on her bucket list, since she heard of what her grandfather did in the war.

A paratrooper, brave and bold, and she wanted to be the same.

Her blind date wasn’t quite so brave, and she ended up flying on her own. With the headset, it was just as she expected it to be. Clouds, below her, and the wind beneath her body, helping her to float.

She was flying, and the headset immersed all the blanks until she was really there. Observing like a hawk in flight. The landscape littered with a criss-cross of farms, houses, and the coast, stretching out to the ocean beyond and nothing could beat it.

She was no longer in a wind tunnel, but where her heart felt more whole. She didn’t want to share the experience, any more than he wanted to be part of it.

So, a disaster was the wrong word to describe her first date. She could see his side of things. His claustrophobia made the experience too daunting. Rats were her phobia, and she could understand the panic attack that went with facing your fears.

There was something about his tears when her headset was finally removed.

He was there when she got out of her dreams, and as they sat in the restaurant, he apologised for the last time. She leant over the table and kissed him. Perfection was an over rated trait in a man. She was never looking for perfect, and the way he cried was beautiful.