Ik ben niet gek, ik ben een vliegtuig

“Ik ben niet gek, ik ben een vliegtuig” (I’m not crazy, I’m an airplane) is the slogan on Michiel’s T-shirt in a group scene about psychiatric experience and stigma. Its significance turns on a small physical edit: after Leny objects to the wording, Michiel crosses out the airplane claim, leaving only the assertion that he is not crazy.

The slogan and its revision

At the day’s opening, Leny says the original slogan is hurtful and stigmatizing to people who have actually thought such things. The group’s attention shifts to Emma, the first-person narrator, as Leny explains her objection. Michiel takes a marker from a drawer and draws a line through the second half of the sentence. The shirt now reads “IK BEN NIET GEK” (“I’M NOT CRAZY”).

The change is literal rather than verbal: Michiel does not replace the disputed words with a different joke; he visibly cancels them. The remaining statement is shorter and less extravagant, but it is also the very claim Leny cannot identify as stigmatizing. The scene’s humor comes from that reversal, not from the original image alone.

Stigma and the joke’s limits

The exchange places a familiar slogan beside the possible reality behind it. Leny’s objection is specifically that some people have genuinely believed they were an airplane, so the shirt’s comic exaggeration may land differently for those with that experience. The group’s glance toward Emma makes the issue immediate within the room without spelling out her response.

After Michiel’s edit, even Leny, to her regret, can find nothing stigmatizing in the words left on the shirt. The episode does not settle the tension between joking about madness and taking lived experience seriously. Instead, the crossed-out phrase makes the boundary visible: a few strokes of marker remove the most startling claim, while the blunt declaration that remains is allowed to stand.