Some Things Never Change

Dateline:  July, 2006.  We are on vacation from our home in Brussels, visiting with my parents for a month.  My then-three year old boy is taking a nap.  Angela is trying to rest.  My then-six year old daughter comes to me, sitting on the couch, and asks: “Can we go fly a kite, daddy?”

“I’m sorry, honey,” I say.  “We don’t have any kites.”

“No problem!” Grandpa says.  “I’ll take you to go get a kite!”

“But the weather is no good,” I say.  The most important thing is that it’s 672° outside, and there is 104% humidity, and the trees are wilting out there, and I have no desire to go try to fly a kite on a day like this. 

“I’ve flown box kites that weighed forty pounds in less wind than this!” Grandpa says.  “I can make anything fly.  I’m a master kite flyer.  Come on, let’s go!”

One trip to Wal-Mart later, we’re standing in a parking lot with a ladybug kite in almost no wind and I’m sweating and we’re trying to make this stupid thing fly.  I’m running up and down like a moron holding this thing up, hoping and praying that it will catch some wind and finally take off.  After about half an hour, the ladybug catches an updraft, and for once I can stop and watch as it begins to go up into the sky.

“Okay, honey, you take it!” I give her the handle and she takes it, staring up at the kite.

And then the strangest thing happens: my daughter, who reads on a tenth grade level, who can do complicated multiplication in her head, and who is capable of speaking two languages, lets go of the kite handle!  It goes bouncing across the parking lot pavement until the ladybug smashes to the pavement ignominiously.

“Honey, you have to hold on to the handle!” I am a little exasperated, especially by grandpa’s laughing.

“I didn’t know,” she said.  “I just let go.”

Sigh.  Despite our best efforts, the ladybug never did fly again that day.

Fast forward to today.  “Hey, dad, can we go fly kites?”

“Of course!”  I happily declare.  “In fact, we’ll go fly SUPER KITES!”

So here’s how this works.  Ordinary, normal kites come with ordinary, normal string spools that are about 75 feet long.  But you can buy a special kite winder that has 200 feet of string on it.  And you can also buy a 400 foot spool of kite thread.  And if you are a boy scout (and I am), you can splice the two lines together to make 600 feet of kite-flying awesomeness.  Because those planes aren’t going to come down to run into your kites: you have to go up and get them.

I spent all morning combining all the thread into one giant spool.

“Will that really work?” Angela asked.

“Of course it will!” I said proudly.

“Won’t it break?”  She asked.

“Never!”

“Won’t it be a pain to reel it all back in?”

“Not at all,” I said.  “It’ll be simple as anything.”

Off we went, armed with our kites.  Interestingly enough, we’d bought our kites at a video store.  Because this is Wyoming, where the wind blows 99% of the time, so anybody who wants to sell kites can probably get them moved. 

Angela had the ladybug kite from Tennessee all those years ago.  I had a kite with a whirly design thing on it.  William had his Ninja Turtle kite.  And Victoria had Wilson.  Because Victoria names everything, even her socks.  Which is weird, but not really the point of the story.

Alas, we only had three kite winders.  So Angela decided to fly the ladybug sans winder.  I, of course, had two spools of thread on a kite winder, and each kid had their kite on a winder.

First up: Victoria.  She took her kite out and unwound it.  Second up: William.  He took his kite out and unwound it.  Third up: Angela.

Oh, poor Angela.

I will admit to a certain amount of perverse humor watching her try to make the ladybug fly, jumping and cursing and running back and forth as it would soar to a majestic six feet before smashing into the earth again.  But try as she might, she couldn’t make it fly.

“Here, let me try,” I said.  “You’re just not doing it right.”

So I took the ladybug kite, and you know what?  I couldn’t even get it to six feet before it crashed.  I swear, the darn thing was broken!

“Daddy!” Victoria saved me from further humiliation.  “I don’t like the winder.  It bit me.”

Who was this wimpy little creature?  Bitten by a kite winder?  Geez, what’s next? Her mattress is too soft?

“Do you want to switch it out?” I asked.

“Yes, please.” She said.

“Do you want me to reel it in for you?” I asked.

“Yes, please.”

It took me a while, but I finally got her kite reeled in.  And I still didn’t know what the big deal was: this whole kite winder thing was no problem.  Quickly I had hers switched out and stowed away her winder.  I was just getting ready to fly SUPER KITE, pausing to chuckle as I saw Angela jumping up and down on the ladybug and yelling “DIE!” when William interrupted me.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah, sport?”

“I don’t like this kite reel.  Can you please switch it out for me?”

“Sure,” I said.  “Do you want me to reel it in for you?”

“No, I got it,” he said.

See?  This is why I like him more when it comes to kite flying. 

Quickly, I had him switched out and the old reel stowed, and once again I took up SUPER KITE, pausing to chuckle as Angela ripped the crossbars out of the ladybug kite and said “I think this one is broken now!”

Then it was time to fly.

My kite grabbed the air and began to ascend, to a place where even eagles fear to tread.  One hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet.  My heart soared.  Ah!  To touch the heavens!  To feel the sky!

My technique was a wonder to behold.  I would let go of the winder and allow thirty or forty feet to play out, then grasp it again and jerk hard on the kite to force it to rise.  Then I would play out another thirty or forty feet, and repeat.

Beauty itself.

I really didn’t know what the kids were whining about, until I’d gotten to about three hundred and fifty feet.  At that point, when I stuck my hand in to stop the winder…

A GIGANTIC PIECE OF MY HAND GOT SLICED OFF AND SPUN AWAY IN A BLOODY, GORY MESS!

“YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGH!”

“Are you okay?” Nobody asked.

Since nobody asked, I swore copiously.  I was bleeding, but couldn’t do anything but hold onto the winder.  That, and change my technique to play the line out in a bit calmer fashion.

I watched in tense anticipation as the knot splicing the two lines together passed out of the spool.  Would it hold?  Was I never to see this kite again?  I held my breath, watching, until I saw it:  SUCCESS!

Soon SUPER KITE soared at a heavenly peak of five hundred and fifty feet, barely a spec, almost imperceptible to human vision.

Then, disaster struck.

“Come back!” Victoria yelled from far off to my left.

“Oh God!” Angela said.  “She’s lost it!”

I looked over to see Wilson flying away, his handle dangling some twenty feet above the ground.  Hilariously, Victoria gave chase, arms outstretched, with just as much chance to grab a 747 out of the sky as she did her kite. 

“Come baaaaack!” she yelled.

Angela began chasing it as well.

“Don’t worry!” I said.  “I’ll come help as soon as I have SUPER KITE down out of the sky!”

And I began to reel it in.

And reel it in.

And in.

And in.

And in.

And take a break because my shoulder was killing me.

And then take another break because my arms were hurting.

“Can I have the car keys?” Victoria asked.  “Mom wants to go chase the kite.”

“Just hold on a second!” I said.  “I’ve almost got this reeled in and…”

I looked up.  The knot was about a hundred feet above me.  I said something then, a bad word, which I shouldn’t have.  “Yeah, here they are,” I said.  “I’m gonna be a while.”

So they left.  I continued to reel in SUPER KITE, and although it seemed like I saw them drive by about forty five minutes later, it probably wasn’t really that long.  SUPER KITE was no closer to the ground than he had been.

“Hey, dad, can I fly super kite?” William asked.

“Not super kite,” I said.  “SUPER KITE.”

“Whatever,” he said. “Can I fly it?”

I noticed that his Ninja Turtle had about three feet of string played out.  “Is there something wrong with your kite?”

“No,” he said.  “I just don’t want to pull a Victoria.”

See?  Prudence.

“Yeah,” I said.  “But be careful, these things can bite.”

“I know,” he said.  “I’m not stupid.”

“And this has a lot of pull on it,” I said. “Hold onto it really tight.”

“Geez, dad, do you think I’m some kind of WIIIIIIIIIIMP!”

The moment his hand grabbed it, he began getting hauled across the playground, and would have probably been lost forever if he hadn’t smashed into a bush.  I went running after him, ninja turtle kite in my hand, and finally dragged him back.

“You weren’t kidding!” he handed it back to me.

“I told you,” I started reeling it in again.

“What did you do to my kite?” he asked.  “It’s all bloody!”

“Oh, my hand got smashed,” I said.  “Sorry.”

“But it’s all gross!  I’m not touching that!  You clean it up!”

“If I clean it up you have to hold SUPER KITE again.”

“Okay, I guess it’ll just be a bloody ninja turtle.”

For the next forty-five minutes, this is what we did:

I wept softly and reeled in the kite.

He would ask “Dad, can we go yet?”

I finally got the kite back down to earth, my back aching, head spinning from blood loss, and both of us wondering what had happened to the female half of our family.

“Do you think they found it?” he asked.

“I’ll bet they accidentally drove the van into the river watching it,” I said.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if they were looking up and then they ran into a gas truck and there was a big fiery explosion and then that explosion blew the kite away and they’d be all like ‘we almost had it’.  That’d be funny.”

“Except for all the death,” I said.  “And the carnage.”

“I dunno,” he said.  “The carnage might be funny.”

We decided to hike on foot in the last known direction of the kite.  I’m really not sure what we were thinking: a kite is not a tornado, so you can’t follow the path of destruction.

Up on the horizon, though, we saw a spot.

“Is that a bird?” I asked.

“Where?”

“Right there!”  I pointed.  “Yeah, it’s a bird.  No, wait, it’s a kite!  No, it’s a bird.  Oh, no, wait, it’s a kite!”

“Just say it’s superman and finish the joke already,” he said. “I’m not going to fall for it.  Oh, wait, it is a kite!”

We’d found the kite.  What’s more, we also found Angela and Victoria, who had also found the kite.

Here’s where it was:

 

A la Charlie Brown, the tree is flying the kite.   The handle had finally gotten stuck in a tree branch, and now the kite flew majestically about 75 feet above it.

“How are we gonna get it down?” she asked.

“I’m thinking we won’t,” I said.

“Yeah, that kite belongs to the tree now,” Angela said.

“But…but…Wilson!”

“Victoria loves nature so much, she gave her kite to a tree,” William said.

Everybody but Victoria laughed.

“So tell me,” I asked.  “How exactly did the kite get away?”

“Well, I was pulling it in,” Victoria explained.  “And I reached out with my right hand, and I missed the string.  So I reached up with my left hand to grab it.  And to reach up, I had to let go of the handle.  And unfortunately I missed with my left hand, too.”

“So basically,” I said.  “It got away from you because you let it go?”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

And I remembered a day many years ago, sweating my butt off, when she did the EXACT SAME THING TO ME!

Sigh.

Some things never change.