According to an online site, 50 million kites are sold in this country every year, but there don’t seem to be as many in the sky as there once were. Maybe that’s because we live in a time in which amusement appears mainly on flat screens and there is no kite-flying app. A time in which kids spend their time inside tapping handheld devices, not running through vacant lots and weedy fields with kites trailing behind them.
Like balsa wood gliders and Duncan yoyos, kites once were a part of just about every boy’s life. Girls flew kites, too, I suppose, but mostly it was boys running, letting the string play out behind them and hoping for lift-off before their kite nose-dived into the ground, causing the balsa frame to snap and puncture the delicate paper.
Sometimes dads came along to help. Moms came along, too, I suppose, but mostly it was dads, hoping not to embarrass themselves and disappoint their sons when the kite never sailed more than head-high.
One of my many failures as a dad happened in the spring when I told my oldest son we could make a homemade kite, not just one of those flimsy store-bought things. We built our kite with sticks and newspapers, Scotch tape and glue. Not only could we never get the kite into the air, it took both of us to lift it.
Last weekend, on a day with a clear, blue March sky, I never got close enough to see who was holding the string at the other end of the solitary kite. Perhaps it was a couple of boys, one holding the string while the other raced across a vacant lot or a weedy field with the kite trailing behind him. It could have been a boy and his dad. Or a girl and her mom.
Or maybe it was merely someone who was 60-something, reliving a time when kites filled the skies as a harbinger of spring.
Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.
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