Friday, April 9, 2004
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Friday, April 9, 2004 |
| Box kites never fly By Rick Ryckeley In springtime, flowers push up from the ground and explode into color, and baby blue tail lizards try to scamper away from the grasp of excited, barefoot little boys. The fine yellow mist of pollen coats everything while big black bumble bees hover lazily, watching as you work out in the yard and daring you to reach out and swat them with the little souvenir baseball bat bought at the Braves game last fall. And it’s kite-flying time. It was April 11, my eighth birthday. I thought it was cool my birthday always fell on spring break, and we had no school. What wasn’t so cool was I had to share my birthday every year with my brother Mark just because he was my twin. When you have a twin brother, you do things differently than if you just had a brother in the room down the hall. Take, for instance, how we woke each other up on our birthday. Each year, whoever woke up first started the pillow fight! This time I woke up first and attacked Mark. The beginning of my eighth year on the earth was looking good. Feathers soon covered the bed, Mark, and the floor. ‘Bout that time Mom walked in to see what all the noise was. She took one look at the all the feathers and said, “Boys!” “But Mom ...” “No buts. You boys clean up this room right now. Hurry up. Your birthday breakfast is ready.” Pancakes, bacon and hot maple syrup in the morning are a great way to start your 8th birthday. Our Mom made the best pancakes. A whooping from your dad at bedtime is a bad way to end your 8th birthday. Our Dad gave the worst whooping. And it was all because of that darn paper kite. No matter what day of the week our birthday was, we always had a party to celebrate. We invited all the guys from the neighborhood. Well, everybody except one: Down the Street Bully Brad. We never invited him to nothing. Looking back, maybe that’s one of the reason he was such a bully. Our birthday had fallen on a Saturday, and Neighbor Thomas was gonna throw us a pool party at his house. Their new diving board had just been installed replacing the one that Bubba Hanks broke the year before when he did his famous double-jump cannonball dive. Since the mighty crack of the diving board, Bubba had been on double-jump restriction by Mrs. Thomas. The swim party wasn’t how we got into trouble, though. It was that darn paper kite. The party was from noon to three. At two, Mr. Thomas grilled out hot dogs and hamburgers, and afterwards, we opened presents. Mom and Dad learned long ago with twins you simply give them the same presents. It cuts down on the fighting. At least that’s what they thought. We just found other things to fight about. That year, Mark and I got new bikes, perfect for jumping over Cripple Creek, some toy called a Frisbee we thought we’d never use, armies of green plastic army men that we decided to save and use at the great dirt clod war we were going to have the next weekend, and two paper kites. It was those darn paper kites that got us into big trouble. We opened the kites, twisted the two pieces of wood to make a cross, unrolled the paper and hooked the ends into the slots of the wood frame, cut a piece of string and tied it to one end of the cross member, looped the string around the other cross member and pulled the string taut to form a bow. We tied a short string to the top and bottom of the kite and then tied our spool of kite string to its middle. All we needed was something for a tail. We knew Mom would get mad if we cut up a sheet or a T-shirt, and socks were too heavy, but Dad was at work, and he had a whole closet full of ties. All we needed were six; three for Mark’s kite and three for mine. We snuck into Dad’s closet, grabbed the ties and ran out the back door before Mom heard us. We tied the ties to the end of the kites, and up they went on a big gust of wind. The ties worked great for tails, and soon our kites were so high we both ran out of string. Thomas and Goof ran home and brought back all the kite string they had. We added it to the end of ours and let it out slowly. Both kites were now about the size of stamps. We ran out of string again so Preston Weston called home and asked his mom to buy ten rolls at the store and bring them over. By six that evening we had the entire neighborhood watching Mark and me fly our kites in our backyard. Our kites flew so high they disappeared from sight! What a great birthday! Mom called us in for dinner. Mark started to reel in his kite. When he had a ball of string the size of a softball, the string broke! He helped me reel in mine, and right when we could barely see the kite, my string broke too! No kites. No ties, but later that evening - one mad Dad. When Dad asked what had happened to all of his best silk ties, we told him, “Two airplanes ran into them and took them away, but you can have this big ball of string instead.” That’s when we got our whoopings. Next year Goofy Steve said he’d give us a box kite for our birthday. He said it didn’t need a tail. A kite that doesn’t need a tail ... sounds like it would be easier to fly, but it wasn’t. For three summers Goof bought me a box kite for my birthday and we tried to fly it. It never flew. All it did was bounce behind me as I ran holding onto the string. The Wife and I are going to Florida for spring break. It’s my birthday. She bought me a box kite. I’ll let you know if it flies or just bounces behind me as I run on the beach. [Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.] |