Nekkid Parts
Undergraduate Pilot Training Class 88-07
Columbus Air Force Base, MS
August 1987
UXBRIDGE, MA – June 4, 2016 – IYAAP Blog – Even for a simple Air Force student pilot, like me, the rules of flight school patch design seemed like common sense. But our class commander told us anyway.
“If y’all get caught with a hidden meaning on y’all’s class patch, y’all are gonna have big troubles. That means no sex words or cuss words. No nekkid parts. Nothing that the Wing Commander’s wife or a Base Chaplain is going to look at one day and get upset about. Y’all know what I’m talking about.”
These days, I find myself telling my kids similar things about their social media accounts. I opened a Twitter account to monitor what my kids were tweeting. They switched to Instagram or Snapchat or some other parent-free e-space I have yet to invade. I can’t follow them everywhere so I keep repeating, “No sex words or cuss words. No nekkid parts.”
In my book, IF YOU AIN’T A PILOT…, I tell the story behind our 88-07 patch, shown above, the battle for which aircraft to depict, and the push for a hidden meaning. On my website, I’ve dedicated a full page to UPT patches of the day, some of which have nekkid parts. For a more complete look at what flight school students have gotten past the censors over the years, I highly recommend Jim Flaviani’s website of USAF Flying Training Patches, which I’ve found to be the best source of Air Force flight training patch memorabilia on the internet. Out of personal bias, my link to Jim’s site takes you to 1980’s Columbus, but he’s got over 200 pages of good clean UPT nostalgia, pop-culture references, sex words, and nekkidness to explore.
IF YOU AIN’T A PILOT… will be available on August 13, 2016. My kids don’t know this yet, but it’s got sex words, cuss words, and nekkid parts.
Maybe there is some benefit to not being able to keep up with your kids on social media….
Ray