K: Kite

Congratulations, you get to read two days worth of snippets from my childhood.

It will explain a lot of how I operate, I promise you.  Maybe.  We'll see.  They're entertaining at the very least.

Kites.  Like these things:

Yay for clip art.

At some point in 4th or 5th grade, a couple friends and I thought it would be a great idea to grab our kites and make use of them in a parking lot at the community center behind our houses.  Why parking lot?  Only place with no trees.  And actually, pretty sure there were no lights.  We were 10 years old, planning wasn't our strong suit.

It was my turn for my kite that I remember being some cross of a fighter jet and Sesame Street, Grover was on it or someone, whatever.  We weren't getting our kites very high as of course, the day you want to fly a god damn kite is the day the wind won't show up.

Mine took a nosedive and smashed onto the bumper of a parked car.  Friends headed over to remove the lodge kite when parked car became moving car.  Moving away car.  Friends give chase and what do I do?  Well I didn't want that asshat in the car to drive off with my Grover Kamikaze flying machine, so I did the next best thing while my friends ran after the car waving their arms in the air to the driver.  I held onto the kite string.

*pause for hilarious effect*

No, I was not dragged across the asphalt.  Though that totally would have made for a better story, right?!  The next worst thing happened, which was the kite string snapping right where I had it wrapped around the middle of my forefinger.  Tore right through the skin.  And it was one of those deep cuts where it takes like five minutes to bleed.

Kite retrieved, I pretty much turned into the 4-year-old I permanently am, certain I could see the bone, bolted home to my great-grandmother waving my finger in the air that it was going to fall off and needed to be set on ice immediately.

Awesome scar, though.