Go Fly a Kite

Camp Hatteras
Outer Banks, NC

I have never in my life had success flying a kite. The highest kite I ever flew got six feet off the ground and collapsed, dead, four seconds later. But today, I flew a kite.

Not only that, I flew it right into the sun. On a string so long it took me almost ten minutes to reel it in.

When I was little, the kites we had were paper. They came disassembled, with their balsa frames in two pieces. You spent a good fifteen minutes trying to put them together, creating aerodynamic tension by slipping the frame into the string that was glued inside the edges of the paper, and it wasn’t unusual to break either kite or frame before you even tried it out.

More often, however, you crashed on your first or second attempt to get it airborne, and some vital part of the kite’s anatomy was forever damaged. We tried everything – scotch tape, glue, bracing the broken limb with a toothpick, but nothing worked very well and the deceased kite was abandoned to the garbage pail, not to be replaced until the next special occasion.

We were blue-collar kids. There wasn’t extra money for breakables. We shared one kite. Nobody had a personal kite unless it came on a birthday, and even then, there was a lot of wheedling and cajoling. “Please, pleeeeze, let me try. C’mon Rich. You can have half my Popsicle. Puhleeze!” Of course, that’s when you broke the kite and still had to give up half the Popsicle anyway.

The boys were better at getting the kite up. Maybe we girls were dynamically challenged, I don’t know. But my mom couldn’t do it either. My dad, of course, was a major flyer. He could even make a kite out of newspaper. It wasn’t as airworthy, but it was an acceptable substitute when we had nothing. He stopped making them after a while, probably because he was sick of the tears and drama when it would crash, as it inevitably did.

Later when I was into dating mode, a kite-flying date would present itself, and I invariably embarrassed myself with my klutziness. I’d break the kite, or fall while running, or run into the lifeguard’s stand (once) or step into a hole. I couldn’t maneuver and look where I was going at the same time. I was a lost cause.

My kids could fly kites. They never asked me to start a kite on its way. Enough said.

But yesterday I went to the Kitty Hawk Kite Shop and bought an airfoil, a lightweight poly-something kite with a baffle construction that is easy to launch because each baffle traps air and pulls it aloft. All you need is a little breeze.

It’s breezy here in Cape Hatteras – or more correctly, Camp Hatteras in Rodanthe at Cape Hatteras National Seashore. I got my kite up in approximately five seconds, and it would be up there still if I hadn’t gotten the idea to come in and shout my good news to the immediate world.

Look at me! I’m flying!

Betty