My emotional day (an essay)
My emotional day, when I said good-bye, and my plans for the future
by JAN, 22nd of June 2014
In 1974, I finished a secondary electrotechnical school in Prague.
I lived with my parents in Říčany, it is a small district town 20 kilometers from Prague.
When I was at home with my mom in the kitchen, she asked me what I wanted to do, I told her that I wanted to be a pilot. My mom jumped up from the chair, raised both hands above his head and began to shout, "Daddy Daddy, our Jenníček went crazy", and ran down the hall to another room, where he had his home workshop to repair watches. My father was a (živostník) tradesman/craftsman, he repaired watches/timepieces, he was a watchmaker/watch repairman (i.e., he was the enemy of the state). Mom's relatives, that is, all the brothers and sisters (she was from a family of 12 children) emigrated to Australia (so she was an enemy of the state too). In the years 1968 to 1971 I was a member of the Boy Scouts Organisation Junák (even I was an enemy of the state). So it was very unlikely that the communist state would allow me to study at a university and to become a pilot. There were many, many if / ifs.
I started to work as a mainframe operator of the state bank. It was an IBM supercomputer, which was served by about 200 operators.
After one month of the work at the computer, I got the order to go into the army. At that time existed the conscription for men aged over 18 a duty to go to the army and serve there two years in the military service. I was a secondary school student, so my conscription was postponed until I was 20 years old.
I had to go to Slovakia to study at the military aviation technical university and become a fighter pilot. My parents did not agree in advance, so I left them in the belief that I was going to serve two years the basic service and that after 2 years I would get home. But the truth was that I had left the home secretly forever.
On the day of departure by train from Prague to Kosice I went to Wenceslas Square to say goodbye. I stood up on the steps of the National Museum, I looked down at the Wenceslas Square and I had tears in his eyes. Goodbye Prague, goodbye Daddy and Mummy who were 20 km away. Then I went to the main station and the train took me to Slovakia. Thus began my greatest adventure of my life. I undertook an entrance exam, a comprehensive medical examination, and intelligence tests. In all the tests, I succeeded. I became an aeronautical/aviation engineer and a pilot. Five years later, I taught in secondary air school in Africa, followed by 13 years as a flight teacher at the University in eastern Slovakia.
What are my plans for the future now that I'm 60 and I'm on a disability pension for partial handicap with cervico-cranial syndrome? I want to continue studying Spanish, and again to visit Mexico, to visit the pilgrim place of Our Lady of Guadalupe/Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe en la Ciudad de México. And I want again to hike and climb the big mountains in Mexico with Mexican boy scouts. And also, I expect within 2 years an investiture in the Czech Grand Bailiwick/Priory of the Order of Saint Lazarus. The Investure is an event during which the traditional knights order is accepting new members and promoting the members who work in the order for many years. The reunited Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem has jurisdictions in 37 countries or areas. The Spiritual Protector of the Order is Gregory the 3rd, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch and all the East.
That's all, folks.... 