I anticipated that someone from NASA would summon me concerning the Nowak incident – it was just a question of who, where and when. The suspense hardly had time to build, as I opened my Inbox to find an urgent email sent just 53 hours after a Navy captain allegedly pepper sprayed an Air Force captain Monday morning at Orlando airport, in what was allegedly the final round of a star-spangled, spit-shined, brass-and-polish, hair-pulling, eye-scratching cat fight over the amorous attentions of a Navy commander.
Having just counseled my brother and his wife on their teenage son’s troubles with love and the law, as you, dear reader, may see for yourself in the previous post, I had spent the time since the preceding Friday feeling a bit chagrined at the fact Rob and Katje are so lamentably immature for a couple of adults with a family. The media reports I read and viewed on Tuesday quickly restored my sense of perspective, however. Here were, allegedly, three exemplars of the mature and responsible American adult – officers in our magnificent armed forces; three brave, valorous, righteous defenders of all the values we in this Nation Under God hold so dear, allegedly acting like two Prince Georges County high school girls fighting over a randy, promiscuous high school stud, who, allegedly, was doing them both like a dog. Then it gets out of hand and one of the girls, as Prince Georges County girls will do, allegedly tracks the other one down, corners her prey sitting in a car and gives her rival a face full of pepper spray. I was shocked, simply shocked, to hear that similar juvenile behavior was allegedly played out in a farcical scenario involving three US military officers; and, that, to make matters even more incredible, not one of them was a Marine. Who was I kidding, I thought to myself as I drove around the Beltway into Prince Georges County on my way to Goddard Space Flight Center – in light of the allegations surrounding the incident at the Orlando airport, anyway, when it comes to acting like mature adults, my metal-ring-riddled, tatoo-covered brother and sister in law are paragons of virtue compared to these three. At least, when you look at Rob and Katje, you pretty much know what to expect; at least those two freaks aren’t, allegedly, such astounding, jaw-dropping, eye-popping hypocrites as are these three military officers.
Now, if the alleged incident had just allegedly involved three ordinary military officers, that alone would have constituted an alleged national scandal sufficiently large, ridiculous, shocking, disappointing and embarrassing to toss the fruit salads on the Joint Chiefs’ manly chests. But no, this was another example, of which I see plenty BTW, of real things that are simply too outlandish and unbelievable to appear in fiction. Consequently, there is a more complicated formula for this particular situation. One must first evaluate all the hypocrisy, irony, prurience, titillation, voyeurism, pain, shock, disappointment, recrimination, horror, outrage, embarrassment, tragedy, alienation, emotional trauma, disillusionment, side-splitting absurdity and salacious three-ring media circus which such an alleged situation would normally generate. Then, add all those factors algebraically, and multiply their sum by the product of the number of ceramic tiles on the bottom of a space shuttle and the pounds of fuel expended during a solid rocket booster takeoff. Now raise that expression to the appropriation power of Congress. Then put that result in parentheses and make it the exponent of a positive integer equal to the number of all the school children who watched Challenger and Colombia blow up like cheap defective Mexican fireworks. That’s how gigantically awful this alleged situation is, provided it is as alleged. In a word, such an alleged situation is (or would be, provided it is as alleged) astronomical – it would not matter if one did this particular problem in double precision on the world’s biggest mainframe, the answer would still be “OVERFLOW ERROR.” Yes, indeed, truth shall ever prove stranger than the wildest fiction, and here is yet further evidence – all three points of this alleged love triangle work for NASA, and two of them are real live, genuine, bona fide active duty astronauts. Without doubt, here is an alleged scandal involving three military officers that would be fit to melt the glittering gold eagles and blazing silver thunderbolts off the Joint Chiefs’ fiercely decorated hats, should it prove to be as truly lunatic as it allegedly appears.
So I might have guessed in advance that it would be the NASA psychologists who would request consultation. Since the earliest days of the space program, NASA has always had the willies about whether being an astronaut would make someone, well, you know, strange in the head. For decades, we’ve seen some hints of that, what with certain astronauts taking UFOs seriously or serving in the Senate. But for the most part, NASA has prided itself on the fact that while a career as an astronaut might result in a horrible death, it won’t turn people into uncontrollable, raving maniacs who might do something allegedly violent or irrational, either, God forbid, on a space mission or, as NASA would no doubt prefer, to some poor schmucks back here on earth after an astronaut returns from an heroic and valiant scientific voyage into that unknown, mysterious yet entrancing and beckoning void we call the cosmos.
My clients this morning, and quite early this morning at that, were Lofgren, whom I have known for a while, and who is the Chief, Astronaut Psychological Readiness Branch, Astronaut Fitness Division, Office of Astronaut Management, Goddard Space Flight Center, and his boss, Wilkins, the director of the aforementioned division.
Now, just last week at the Treasury Department, I had attended a meeting of federal bureaucrats who were, to say the least, nervous wrecks, but nothing could have prepared me for the way Lofgren and Wilkins looked. Seriously, dear reader, you’ve no doubt seen pictures of Captain Nowak – the mug shot, the televised court appearances, the perp walks – well, I guarantee, compared to Lofgren and Wilkins, Captain Nowak was ready for Mr. DeMille’s closeup in every shot. We met in Lofgren’s office, where his desk was piled high with NASA manuals, astronaut files, psychological, neurological and psychiatric reference books, and, of course, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday editions of the New York Times and Washington Post.
“Tom,” Lofgren began, “What we need is a strategy for damage control.”
As I reclined into a chair on the other side of his desk, Lofgren disappeared, and I found myself talking to a huge pile of papers, which, after a moment of careful reflection, I quietly asked “Do you really think this incident will do a great deal of damage to NASA?”
“No, no,” the pile of papers replied. “I’m talking about damage to us!”
Seated to my right, Wilkins glanced at the pile of papers and then to me, nodding gravely. “The PR organization at NASA Headquarters downtown has had a double crew of spin masters on this issue around the clock since early Tuesday. We’ve seen their work before.”
“That’s right,” the pile of papers interjected “they’ll spin it as an unfortunate alleged case of human frailty, and then when the questions about Nowak’s presumptive state of mind during the alleged incident arise, they will pledge to investigate fully. Then there will be a witch hunt. Heads will roll.” The pile of papers rustled in agitation. “Afterward, as usual, top NASA management will be held completely blameless.”
“Blameless,” Wilkins echoed, nodding agreement at the pile of papers. “But first, the witch hunt. For the PR pitch to effectively work on the media, the military and Congress, it’s obvious that some scapegoats will have to be sacrificed in order to create the illusion that something was done to prevent something like this from happening again, if, of course, something like this has actually happened as alleged. We’ve already heard that the Agency is searching for somebody to blame for Nowak’s alleged actions, which if actually committed by her, would be obvious evidence of severe insanity.”
“Where did you hear that?” I asked as the noises from the pile of papers began a slow crescendo.
“Uh, talk, scuttlebutt, you know,” Wilkins replied.
“Rumors,” I ventured.
Wilkins knit his brow and cast a slow, penetrating glance up at the ceiling tiles. “Oral representations from other members of the organization; yes, I suppose under certain interpretations, they could be called that.”
“Gentlemen,” I continued, “you are both distinguished psychologists of esteemed reputation. You are therefore familiar with organizational and crowd behaviors, and especially those when there are conditions of external stress. But nevertheless, taking that into account, both of you are firmly convinced with respect to the veracity of what you have heard?”
“Yes,” Wilkins and the pile of papers replied, in an eerie unison.
“We’re the ones ultimately responsible for the psychological evaluations performed on all NASA astronaut candidates. There’s no way to escape it. We’re in the bulls-eye,” the pile of papers said.
“The hot zone,” Wilkins elaborated.
“The crosshairs,” the pile of papers moaned.
“No man’s land,” Wilkins whispered.
“Ground zero,” the pile of papers whimpered.
“It’s only a matter of time before somebody else, trying to shift the blame away from themselves, fingers us,” Wilkins followed up.
Who am I to question, what collectively, was more than a half century of psychological training, research and clinical practice? “Okay,” I relented, “if you say so – I guess you fellows, of all people, would know if you were being paranoid.”
Wilkins nodded at me as the pile of papers continued to rustle ceaselessly, the noise slowly growing in volume.
“Nevertheless,” I continued, “how much responsibility could you reasonably be expected to bear for Nowak’s alleged actions? People are alleged to commit crimes of passion every day…”
“But not NASA astronauts,” Wilkins interrupted, “It’s our responsibility to assure their psychological fitness for astronaut training and the performance of billion-dollar missions in outer space. NASA astronauts are supposed to have the psychological stability required to operate orbiting research stations and travel to Mars.”
“I don’t know, guys,” I mused, “some people might say you have to be nuts to want to go to Mars in the first place.”
The rustling pile of papers reached its fortissimo – Lofgren’s head popped up.
“Look at these hobbies – bicycling, running, skeet, sailing, gourmet cooking, rubber stamps, gardening, reading and crossword puzzles. Rubber stamps and crossword puzzles! That combination is a dead giveaway and we missed it!”
Wilkins shook his head vigorously. “Now you’re panicking and going off half-cocked,” he acidly admonished Lofgren, “That’s not a mental instability hobbies combination indicator for female astronaut candidates.” Stung, Lofgren retreated behind his paper pile, his head disappearing like a Whack-a-Mole’s.
Wilkins rose, stepped over to Lofgren’s desk, and pulled a NASA manual from the middle of a towering stack, which nearly toppled as he did. Opening it, he ran his right index finger down the page, stopping near the bottom. “That’s only part of the actual one, which is entry number 312 in the NASA Astronaut Psychological Qualification List of Female Candidate Mental Instability Hobby Combinations, and which, in its entirety, reads ‘rubber stamps, crossword puzzles and fly fishing.’ There was no fly fishing in her hobby list, and we can only consider matches with complete combinations, not partial matches, in a psychological evaluation.”
“Looks like she may have done some fly fishing anyway,” I quipped.
Lofgren’s head popped up again. “How so?”
“Well,” I said with a wink, “it certainly would appear to a reasonable person that she caught at least one alleged trouser trout.”
Wilkins looked at Lofgren. Lofgren looked at Wilkins.
“Do you think he’s right,” Wilkins asked Lofgren, “is trout species a discriminator we should have included with ‘fly fishing?’” They both looked at me.
Smiling pleasantly, I asked, “Any of those hobby combinations read something like ‘skeet, gardening and adultery?’”
“We have ‘skeet, gourmet cooking and sudoku,’ but that’s all,” Wilkins said, frowning uncertainly. Wilkins flipped to the back of the manual – probably consulting an index. His face went blank.
“None of the combinations contain ‘adultery.’” Wilkins closed the manual and just stood there, staring at the cover.
I waited a minute, but he didn’t move a muscle. Finally I said, “Any idea why?”
Lofgren’s head peered earnestly at me, its chin barely clearing the top of the paper pile. “There’s only one possible reason,” Lofgren’s head replied, “no females in the psychological population groups used to compile the lists, whether they were normal or abnormal, ever mentioned ‘adultery’ as a hobby.”
Oh, boy, now I was wondering about these guys – they had taken an entire sequence of wise cracks seriously. I’m no Sigmund Freud, but I do know sane people interpret facetiousness differently. “That’s odd,” I went on, “do you suppose they consider it work?”
I could see the gears stripping teeth, the sparks flying; I could smell the smoke as Wilkins’ and Lofgren’s fevered, boiling brains tried to process what I had just said as a serious scientific question. There I was, at Goddard Space Flight Center, in the company of the two most senior NASA psychologists responsible for astronaut sanity. Now both of them were catatonic, their synapses totally fried from attempting the psychological equivalent to a biophysical aeronautic analysis of why, if time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
I sat down, opened my briefcase, pulled out a copy of the Atlantic Monthly, put it inside a NASA astronaut psychological screening manual and read it. About an hour later, somebody in a laboratory down the hall apparently knocked over a compressed gas cylinder, which hit the floor with an ear splitting clang. Lofgren and Wilkins jumped slightly, then turned to see me, sitting there, reading what looked like one of their manuals.
“What,” Wilkins finally managed, “were we just talking about? I seem to have lost my train of thought.”
“Happens to the best of us,” I replied, standing up again so I could see Lofgren, who, having also just gotten back from wherever he and Wilkins had recently been, and not handling the return trip quite so well, was gazing about frantically like a trapped squirrel.
“You’re in your office at Goddard,” I told Lofgren, who closed his eyes, opened them slowly, and seeing it was true, breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Time to get back to work, then. I picked up a file picture of the alleged rooster that caused this alleged hen fight and walked nonchalantly around the office, regarded his likeness carefully, turning the photograph so that Wilkins and Lofgren could examine it closely, too. “I know there’s no accounting for taste,” I began, “but what’s Nowak’s alleged attraction to this Oefelein guy, anyway? I mean, really, check out his pictures – he looks like a soda jerk in a beach movie made forty or fifty years ago.”
“That is, in fact, an important part of the NASA astronaut psychological profile,” Wilson explained as he took the picture and held it up to the light, “In 1959, NASA compiled a psychological baseline on 500 American male soda jerks who tested normal on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. All male NASA astronaut candidates must show at least an 87 percent correlation to baseline responses on that personality axis of the NASA Astronaut Candidate Personality Test for Social Conformity.”
“So,” I enquired, “that’s where all those hopelessly outdated crew cuts come from?”
Wilkins nodded his head vigorously. “Precisely. It’s essential that NASA knows it’s dealing with consistent, predictable subsystems, because as far as NASA is concerned, that’s what astronauts are – the sole biological subsystems of a space mission. As such, consistency and predictability are paramount.”
“Which is why, I suppose,” I said, walking around behind Wilkins so that we were both looking at the picture, as if we were CIA spooks perusing photos of an Iranian nuclear centrifuge plant, “you haven’t updated the tests since NASA was founded?”
“Well, certainly, it’s good to have a consistent data set for comparison,” Wilkins opined, still regarding the picture with an intense and highly analytical air, “but to tell the truth, every time we’ve proposed updating the tests, NASA Headquarters has said there wasn’t enough money to do it.” Wilkins placed the picture on top on one of Lofgren’s piles and smiled at him. Lofgren smiled back. Turning in my direction, Wilkins continued. “Just between you and me, I think they like the products that the current test battery selects and don’t want to take any chances changing it; after all, the Agency has been generally successful with them over the years, so why monkey around?”
Lofgren, his attention now focused by the photo, picked it up and began perusing it, aping the detached attitude his boss had just displayed. “I agree that it’s probably not his looks,” Lofgren assessed dryly.
“And,” I asked, “I assume, that, ahem, NASA physical parameter specifications for astronauts would preclude him being, ah, how shall I say…”
“Not the published physical specifications,” Wilkins discretely interjected, “but once we started considering women as astronaut candidates, the Agency did introduce some other… constraints… on both genders, I might add. Those specifications are highly classified, so I can’t tell you the details without written authorization from the Office of the Administrator. Let’s just say I’ve reviewed the relevant materials, and it’s… I can assure you that issue is not… considerable by any means.”
“I think it’s much more likely they were attracted to one another because they are both astronauts,” Lofgren continued, “There is a theory, with some research behind it, I might add, that being an astronaut is such a unique existence, only another astronaut can truly understand it.”
“Okay,” I volleyed back, pretending to play devil’s advocate, “I know they’re fellow astronauts, but is their job that different from, say, being a fighter pilot? If a gynecologist marries a urologist, will the sex be better than if they were both married to certified public accountants instead? Could nookie in zero gravity with a guy who looks like – no, isn’t even as handsome as Gomer Pyle, really be so good that a woman with an aerospace engineering degree from Annapolis and a captain’s commission in the United States Navy would risk not only her career, but years running from the dykes at a Florida women’s prison to…,” I said, cutting myself off for dramatic effect, which I intensified with a well-timed pause. “Hey, wait a minute,” I went on, pretending that playing devil’s advocate had revealed something that I hadn’t already thought of while reading the Atlantic Monthly, “Tell me if this adds up: what’s the most lunatic thing about Nowak’s entire alleged escapade, the one thing that makes it different from virtually every other case where one woman has allegedly raided the gun locker or allegedly gone to the hardware store and allegedly then lit out like a bloodthirsty harpy to allegedly commit felonies upon another woman who was allegedly standing between her and a man she allegedly wanted?”
Wilkins looked at Lofgren. Lofgren looked at Wilkins.
“The alleged diaper,” they both said, again in an eerie unison.
“Right,” I replied. “She allegedly drove 900 miles from Houston to Orlando wearing an alleged diaper. She allegedly donned an alleged wig and alleged trench coat wearing an alleged diaper. She allegedly confronted her alleged rival wearing an alleged diaper. She allegedly committed several crimes while wearing an alleged diaper. She reportedly told the police she was wearing an alleged diaper. Bottom line, whatever she allegedly did, she allegedly did it while wearing an alleged diaper.”
I paused for effect. Wilkins and Lofgren looked at each other, then turned their gaze on me.
“So?” The unison was more than eerie that time, it was downright creepy.
“So, could all these alleged things, if they did indeed occur, of course, have resulted from a case of infantile regression?”
“Infantile regression,” Wilkins demanded, “caused by what?” “By wearing a diaper,” I replied. “What if wearing a diaper all the time, as astronauts have to do in space, as she has herself done, for prolonged periods, can cause a person to undergo infantile regression?”
Lofgren stepped out from behind his protective paper pile, suddenly a man back in control of his destiny. “Tom, that’s it! Before we discussed this with you, we never considered that we might be confusing cause and effect! She wasn’t wearing an alleged diaper allegedly committing heinous crimes because we missed something in her psychological evaluation. Instead, a perfectly plausible explanatory theory – which cannot be feasibly refuted – is that she developed a psychological condition, one that we never tested her or anybody else for – infantile regression – and she developed it because, as an astronaut, she had to wear a diaper!”
The haggard expression left Wilkins’ face and his eyes began to sparkle with delight. “Of course – we didn’t do anything wrong, nor did we make any mistakes on the psychological tests or during the astronaut candidate screening process. Instead we find ourselves in a classical situation scientists have encountered since… since… “
“Since Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens…” I offered.
“Yes,” Wilkins expostulated, pointing his finger at the ceiling. “Here we were, trying to figure out why she was allegedly running around crazy wearing a diaper…”
Lofgren hopped up and down in tiny, excited jumps. “… when all the while,” Lofgren broke in, “an equally plausible explanation for our observations is that wearing a diaper could have made her allegedly run around crazy! Tom, this is great, I can’t thank you enough. Your theory explains everything perfectly and it lets us completely off the hook, too – under such circumstances, we’re totally blameless!”
“Blameless,” Wilkins happily shouted.
My job there was done, but for a small detail. Solutions can often generate problems, and it’s always good to be proactive about that. “Glad to have been of service, gentlemen,” I said, casually tossing the NASA manual, my copy of the Atlantic Monthly concealed within it, into my briefcase. “However, there is one more issue we should consider. If, hypothetically, wearing diapers all the time makes another NASA astronaut theoretically regress to the postulated infantile state, and they are later alleged to have committed some more alleged crimes, would not your knowledge of this theory, in addition to your having expounded it with respect to this alleged incident, render you, according to some possible interpretations of that hypothetical situation at least, theoretically culpable in some manner?”
Wilkins pondered briefly. “You’re right, Tom, we need to address such an eventuality. I’m going to recommend that, prior to every mission, all the NASA astronauts involved must wear diapers 24/7 for a period of six months while undergoing psychological testing for infantile regression every two weeks.
Holy Hanna – and the Mercury guys thought being required to donate sperm samples was tough. Taking my leave, I shook each hand in turn. “Gentlemen, in my opinion, if a physically and mentally healthy person can stay sane while being forced to wear a diaper for six months, they deserve to be sent to Mars.”