Column: ‘Top Gun’ is fun, but it’s hardly the reality

Leather jackets, which hadn’t been cool since the Fonz went off the air, were everywhere. Aviator glasses went from being painfully out-of-date to summer must-haves. And guys who had never considered a life in uniform embarked on military careers because they, too, felt the need for speed.

There was a huge surge in enlistments after “Top Gun.” It is going to be interesting to see if “Top Gun: Maverick” is going to do the same in 2022. That’s one big reason why the U.S. Navy, reports say, worked with Hollywood to bring the sequel to the big screen; the flying in the movie was done by real Navy pilots. It’s no coincidence that “Maverick” is being released at the end of the spring semester, when young graduates are trying to decide what’s next. What could be a better recruitment tool than putting audiences in the cockpit?

My dad was in the Navy for 28 years. He wasn’t flying jets. He was doing something much more important — he was a recruiter. He helped guide young men and women through what was one of the biggest decisions of their lives. He gave advice, and he talked to the parents who had questions about their kids joining the service. And while he surely enlisted a few Top Guns, he also signed up a few Top Mops — the sailors charged with clean-up detail. One of his first assignments had to do with cleaning an engine room on a ship, and he still grosses out at the smell of fish.

Top Mops are a lot more common than the Top Guns in all branches of the military, because the reality is that we’re not always flying right in through the danger zone — and that’s a good thing. After all, jets are cool but they are weapons of war. Most assignments are far less glamorous and a lot less hazardous, too.

I saw a couple of pilots having lunch at Snoopy’s Pier in Corpus Christi once, and that was more than I saw growing up in a South Texas Navy household. But over the course of his career, the Navy opened a lot of doors for my dad, and that opened a lot of doors for me. His military enlistment shaped his life and made mine possible.

So maybe “Maverick” will draw more potential Top Guns and Top Mops. The nation needs Mavericks, but it also needs a lot of someones to do all sorts of jobs. In return, there is plenty of job security and opportunity, and that can change the trajectory of a family’s future.

That, alone, is worth the price of admission.