Kite Flying in Suburbia During Rush Hour

It is nearly 10 o’clock on an evening that follows a bedtime of 3 a.m. this morning. And actually, that isn’t so unusual lately. It isn’t uncommon to find me at this here laptop at 2 a.m. on any given night. Blogging is ruining my life.

Ha ha ha ha ha. No, I am joking. But I do think I need to make this one short and hit the sack tonight. I’m not sure how long I can pretend to have acute Narcolepsy in front of the children during daylight hours.

Since it is early in the new year, with the dew barely dry on our dreams and resolutions (cue the pan flute), I will post a photo of Mama’sBoy’s goals for the year. These will give you a whole new respect for him. Feel free to let your mind wander. Just go with it.

Ah, phonetic spellings are golden sometimes.

Yesterday I went to a High Tea at my little Christian school from eons ago. Me. High Tea. I know. That is a post just waiting to happen. Though I did not knock anything over or bring screaming shame to myself or anyone else, I certainly was a less-than-obvious choice to be at a high tea partaking in froo froo doodads. I took good mental notes. When they have arranged themselves in my mind, perhaps those notes will arrive here. As I left high tea, the wind whipped up like a modern day plague and threatened to take off with me. I’m not easy to take off with, either, I can assure you. And in light of that wind, and the Informinator’s mentioning to me that she flew a kite with her kids in that, I thought back on a nostalgic scene from a few years ago. Kites used to be all the rage around here.

First, let me paint you a picture. Me. AG. MamasBoy. Outside in stale, 90 degree, 5 o’clock sunlight. There are scads of cars, with more scads of people in them, returning to the neighborhood after a day of work. And there we are on the sidewalk carrying a $6 ToysRUs Superman kite, worth no more in quality than the 17 cents it cost them to make it.  For days — weeks even — AG has come home from school begging to fly that kite. And each time it has come up I have managed a plausible excuse for why we absolutely cannot fly it that day.

• There’s no wind (this one has worked on numerous occasions).
• It’s raining outside.
• You can’t really fly kites very well in subdivisions.
• The planets are not aligned this week.
• I’m too fat to run with it.
• It just works best at a park or a beach.
• Don’t you have homework…some cutting or something?

Today he sensed a hiccup in my answer; a pause just long enough to ask the question a different way. And for some reason, I answered it a different way. I said, “When I’m done folding the laundry, I’ll check the weather outside.” He lit up, went running for the front door, and shouted over his shoulder, “I’ll check it for you!” I knew where that was going. He only has one forecast. As I suspected, he returned with his one forecast: “It’s PERFECT!” Well, surprisingly enough, this time he was right. It truly was good kite flying weather, if you aren’t on a sidewalk in a suburban neighborhood with every neighbor in the whole place driving past you.
So, there we were.
On the sidewalk.
And being that my science is not up to par with my awesome cutting and pasting skills, it took me a good minute and lots of rotating in place on the sidewalk to even figure out which way the wind was blowing. Then, I had to figure out which way we needed to run with it. And then, all that was left was to run.
And we did.

AG held the string and the handle while I ran behind him with the kite and Mama’sBoy ran behind me bursting forth little random “hurrays” and the suchlike. We ran with a flimsy superman kite like an awkward little kite brigade, tossing it clumsily into the air when a puff of wind would happen past. And car after car passed, watching us thrash, enjoying the show.

Time after time, the kite looked us square in the face and said ‘no thanks’ as it bounced off the pavement.  Time after time, we walked back to our starting block to run with it again.

Only twice did that kite get airborne. Two borderline successes for at least 13 failures, but that was enough for AG. He stopped in the driveway, sweat rolling down his face, and said, “I’m done. I need a drink.”

And that was that. So now I get to add another excuse to my list for the next time he asks:

• We did that yesterday.