NASA lady wears adult diapers

By Melissa Mongi
Senior Staff Writer
February 14, 2007

This is probably the hardest time of year for single women. Hearts and flowers are everywhere you turn. Annoying friends chatter about what they think their boyfriends will get them for Valentine’s Day. I’ll never forget watching a girl in high school get a bouquet of roses in the middle of class. I’ll also never forget feeling significantly less good about myself.

Women deal with it in various ways. Some eat their way through a carton of Ben & Jerry’s to get through the day, while others go a bit further.

On Monday, Feb. 5, NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak fell from the height of being one of the country’s finest into the deep cavern of despair that comes with being in love.

According to the Associated Press, while trying to win the affection of fellow astronaut, William Oefelein, Nowak decided she had to get rid of her competition — Colleen Shipman. Shipman is a 30-year-old Air Force captain assigned to a NASA support squadron near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Instead of being passive aggressive and simply jealous, like most women, Nowak went a bit overboard. She tracked Shipman, found her flight plans to Orlando, got directions to Shipman’s home and planned herself one bizarre road trip.

Nowak, a Navy captain and mother of three, was recently separated from her husband after returning from operating the robotic arm on the space-shuttle Discovery last July. Ready to confront Shipman on that fateful Minday, Nowak loaded her car with a wig, a BB gun, a knife, a steel mallet, pepper spray, some rubber tubing, large plastic bags and six latex gloves. Nowak not only knows how to work robot limbs, but she sure can pack a car. Either she was ready to kill, clean and cook a very large turkey or she was prepared for a rather nasty confrontation with Shipman.

The best part of Nowak’s planning comes in the form of adult diapers. To avoid any nasty bathroom breaks driving from Houston to Orlando, Nowak thought the diapers would speed her journey. The BB guns and the six latex gloves didn’t disturb me, but this is just too much. She drove 900 miles, in diapers, to confront the woman who was dating the man she loved. This almost hurts my head as much as it hurts my soul.

When did women turn to diapers and rubber tubing to solve their problems? Nowak was a well-established woman at the top of her trade and a mother who has been in space. How could she slip beyond normal desperation just to hook up with some man? I have never felt so sad for my own gender. Nothing in her planning could have seemed sane when, in the hope of getting rid of the competition, she diapered herself up.

My main point of consternation is while she was attacking Shipman, where was the guy? I have always found it odd that we women take out our aggressions on the “other woman.” The man, Oefelein, was not stalked by Nowak. Once in Orlando, Nowak did not tap on Oefelein’s car window and then shoot him with pepper spray. Instead, Shipman felt Nowak’s wrath in the form of a crazed-diaper-wearing-lover toting pepper spray.

Nowak missed the memo that when your lover has another girlfriend, it’s best to dump the loser. She is out on $25,000 bail and donning a tracking device that monitors her movement. She faces a few possible charges, including attempted murder, attempted kidnapping and battery.

I wonder if this time of year just got to her. Maybe, it was all too much with her husband of 19 years gone and the object of her affection with another woman. Meanwhile, the conversational hearts, the roses and the cutesy stuffed animals mocked her pain everywhere she looked. Maybe she watched as her friend Sally indulged in a new box of Rocher chocolates and something in her brain clicked. Who could blame her? Those are some delicious chocolates.

mongim1@lasalle.edu