I heard a radio show today about a guy who, when he was a teenager, was in a car accident that left him in a coma. His buddy's truck flipped and rolled and rolled. His buddy flew out the window. His buddy just got a few scratches, no problem. Our guy, Ian, his ribs were shattered and they punctured all sorts of important things and there was plenty of blood in places blood didn't belong, and he had a 1% chance of living but he lived anyway.
He was in a coma for a while, unresponsive. Another thing about our guy Ian was that he flew planes. Since he was a baby he was fascinated with planes, and he took lessons every weekend from a pilot named Johnny Victory. When he was in a coma his parents played him the theme song from Top Gun, which always makes me think of nicknames like Maverick and Iceman and Goose, and now I'll think of Johnny Victory—what a name.
In addition to the theme song from Top Gun, Johnny Victory made a cassette tape that was a flying lesson. It walked the listener through all the checks, led them through everything to get the plane up and out. And our guy Ian's parents put that cassette tape in a Walkman, and they put those Walkman headphones on their kid, and Ian just listened and listened and in the radio show Ian says that he heard everything—the Top Gun theme song, the flight lessons, his parents talking to him, the doctors asking him to respond.
There's no point. Ian, the kid whose chance of recovery was one in one hundred, he lived, and he made a full recovery, and he still flies planes. That's a Good Thing.
The whole point of this is that I like the name Johnny Victory and Johnny Victory deserves his own story and I think I'll write it.
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