I don’t know diddly squat about flyin’. But Pop does know a fair amount about the subject. I heard him talkin’ the other day about bein’ stuck in a doctor’s office or some such place where he was captive to the unavoidably faint sounds of music permeating the waiting room.
Well, he said, this song comes on about somebody bein’ somebody else’s wind beneath their wings. So Pop got to thinkin’ about how something they were sayin’ just wasn’t right. He said when you’re bored outta your gourd in that kinda situation your mind just wanders around thinkin’ all kinds of meaningless thoughts.
First off, the wind beneath a plane’s wings doesn’t do much. It’s just altitude below. It’s the wind above a plane’s wings that provides the necessary lift to fly. And it ain’t really wind that matters either. It’s the velocity of that air over the wings that determines when that particular plane has enough lift to get off the ground.
Bein’ caught in this philosophical conundrum, Pop got to thinkin’ that maybe the person who wrote this song wasn’t really complimenting somebody else after all. Maybe they were offering a veiled criticism of the subject of their song because bein’ the wind beneath somebody’s wings is pretty useless.
And then Pop got to thinkin’, nah, they probably had the best intentions. They just don’t know diddly squat about flyin’ either.