COLUMN: If She Might, How About Me?

By Tobin Barnes

We don’t know all the facts, yet, do we?

Heck, we don’t even know whether most or only part of the story is true. I hope it isn’t.

But even if the whole thing turns out to be hokum, that wigged-out woman astronaut story is scary.

First details I heard came from the lead-off story on the CBS Nightly News. Normally, I hate that kind of human interest prominence.

You know, the world’s going to hell in a hand basket, and the national news outlets start their broadcasts with a low-level story involving some kind of isolated novelty. Drives me nuts that something like that might be the center of the nation’s interest when other things are coming apart at the seams, not the least of which are the lives and billions ground up on the millstone of Iraq.

But the wild astronaut thing wasn’t one of those human angst-story revelations that irritate me. This angst story had significance--mostly because it gives me, and maybe you, the heebie-jeebies.

Makes you think, “If her, and if true, who’s next?”

Being a Baby Boomer, I fed on the storied lore of the intrepid astronauts. As Tom Wolfe wrote, they alone, amongst all the masses of humanity, had the “right stuff.”

Steely-eyed pilot/intellectuals, they could take on any dangerous challenge and nonchalantly crack jokes while, earth-bound, we sat glued to our televisions, vicariously white-knuckling it in our easy chairs.

Whenever a deadly threat arose, they’d coolly respond with something like, “Houston, we have a problem.” Anybody else would have been freaking. But not these hand-picked, intensely educated, heavily trained athletes of outer space. Oh no.

So what do we make of this incredible story: 1985 Naval Academy graduate and current astronaut, not to mention married mother of three, who last summer completed a 13-day mission in the space shuttle, dons diapers and drives 900 miles to confront Captain Colleen Shipman, her perceived rival for the affections of another astronaut.

According to the New York Times, “Captain Nowak was in disguise at the time, wearing a wig. She had with her a compressed air pistol, a steel mallet, a knife, pepper spray, four feet of rubber tubing, latex gloves and garbage bags.”

According to the police report, the compressed air pistol she carried “was going to be used to entice Ms. Shipman to talk with her.” (Unusual use of the word “entice.”)

Yeah, weird, but most of all, how about that element straight out of bizzaro world? Diapers, for crying out loud! Was that a sharply brilliant criminal mind at work—no fingerprints on gas station restroom doors, beat any time frame the cops could imagine—or just a wacko interpretation of her brand of looney tunes?

So what about all the stress testing astronauts go through, all the demands already met and conquered in an gruelingly intense, highly specialized profession.

And then after all that, she suddenly cracks over the possibility of losing the affections of a man with whom she’d reportedly been making eyes at, but little more?

Huh. Guess it can happen to anyone.

If heroic astronauts can come to this, makes you wonder what Mother Teresa was contemplating in her less charitable moments. Makes you wonder what George Bush might do when he finally sees one editorial cartoon too many. Maybe mountain bike over to Nancy Pelosi’s house and pull up her petunias?

And ultimately, if them, how about me?

Yes, there’s the real importance of this deservedly headlining, but yet to be proven, eerie story.

It scares me. If esteemed astronaut Nowak, what am I capable of?

Please, oh please...let it be anything but the diapers.