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belching and swearing. We can’t chew tobacco and there is no sneezing without covering. Apparently some pilots, men in particular, have no instinctive or intuitive knowledge about such things – nor crafting a politically correct passenger briefing or PA. Understanding and avoiding such social faux pas is a learned behavior and this airline pilot learned plenty of social restrictions along the path of enlightenment. From a factory working outdoorsman (guilty of most of the prohibited activities above), to a fighter pilot, to an airline career where I am under the all-seeing eyes and ears of the flying public. Let not you, my non-PC pilot friends, suffer a similarly painful study in social etiquette nor the fine art of tooth-picking.
Better to have something stuck in your choppers than a bad word stuck in your throat.
A few of the previously mentioned, left-behind toothpicks live in my wallet and another few in the pocket of my airline work shirt. The ones in my wallet are for days off, traveling in civilian clothes and while on layovers. In the cockpit, I can’t reach those that are in my wallet because I’m strapped in and sitting on it, so the ones in my shirt
pocket are used when I’m at the controls of the mighty Guppy. But while the word Guppy is still permitted, we can’t say the C-pit word anymore – too much emotional trauma over the origin.
Its first use began as a way to describe a place where cock fights were held. A cock is a rooster, also known as a gamecock, and is a male, gallinaceous (a heavy bodied, ground feeding) bird, usually a chicken. Later, cock-pit was used by Shakespeare as a reference to the round, noisy and crowded theatre.
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Political correctness is tyranny with
manners.
– Charlton Heston
The good manners that mom and dad taught us are now called “politically correct.” And politically correct speech and behavior is an important aspect in all endeavors. But the PC police have gone too far. I understand why boarding announcements and inflight PA’s are now recorded instead of live. Each body movement, facial expression and word, including any unintended inferences due to intonation, inf lection, volume and tone must be passed through a committee of linguists, accountants and attorneys. All this to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, embarrassing someone, causing undue stress or being labeled as a bigoted and biased B-word. So, whether male or female, when in public or one-on-one, don’t do any of the guy things listed above, nor show prejudice or bias toward race, religion, gender, age, hair length or those that use toothpicks in public.
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September 2018 TWIN & TURBINE • 41