cardboard, tape and great moments in aviation

Back when I was five or so I wanted an airplane. Not a toy plane...an *airplane*. One of those two-tone Cessna or Piper single props at the county airport would do just fine, like I'd see when Dad and I would sit in the parking lot and watch flight lessons. Whenever the inspiration would hit, there I was finding materials and bugging everyone to help me nail boards together or whatever. Why would we need a long cord to power an old washing machine motor? We can just put one of those outlet box thingys from the wall in there and...

Anyway, at some point we came across this short, thick cardboard tube from a roll of whatever, but to my mind's eye, the propeller shaft. Next thing I know I've got boxes in the front room taped together to form the, um, "fuselage," side flaps for wings, rear flap for a tail. I must have been persuasive because Mom used a *lot* of masking tape trying to flange it to the side of the box. A nearby Naugahyde hassock becomes landing gear. As soon as it was all, um, "together" there was no stopping. I was gonna fly an AIRPLANE right there in the front room, dang it all.

So there she was. Up off the floor about to my waist, a staggering sixteen inches, and it would almost stand on its own when I let go. Mom's skepticism is but background noise as I climb in, just a tad shaky, one leg in, now the other...

*THUMP*

About 23 years later, and interestingly, ten years *ago*...well, evidently some lessons bear repeating and on a grand scale. When you're little and messing around with household materials in the front room, the real danger is trivial even when your dreams collapse to the sound of ripping tape. Different story when you've barnstormed your way into the almighty American Dream only to find a grizzly nightmare. In it, you're hopes are empty, relationships trite, appetite is DOA, paranoia coats the tongue...but if you pay attention, you catch on to what's been available all along while you were chasing wind.

Some bumper sticker has it right. We plan, God laughs. But the joke is never on us unless we take ourselves too seriously.