Paper Planes

(A repost from 16 June 2006)

My kids were all over me early last night while I was surfing for news on cable TV and they all got some stacks of school paper in their hands. As usual, they all want me to build them some small flying contraptions made out of paper, otherwise known as ‘paper planes’ and I thought, “Here we go again”. It’s pretty laborious since they just can get enough of these paper planes when they start to have one on their hands that they keep getting at me even if I had build them too many already. Geez, I had to let go of the television for the meantime when this kind of things happens.

Well, I started giving ideas to the kids some years ago bout what a simple sheet of paper can do because when I was as young as them, I used to make them myself; lots and lots of them in fact. I had folded each paper so carefully to create that perfect symmetry where each wing would have the same span; that way, its flight would be so ideal and sometimes superlatively graceful. They don’t always turn out right; some paper planes I’ve made just scuttled towards the open air and go spiraling downward the moment they lost steam. And yet there were some that felt so good to watch at in flight, their directions were straightforward and when they glide, they had moved like real airplanes does and had always gave me that momentary fulfillment that was both invigorating and unexplainable. There is something about paper planes that tells me how simple things can turn into something sublime and in my mind, paper planes had always symbolized freedom of flight and of movement and how human hands can mold things according to his or her own whims and desires; that we can do what we want to do or like we can be what we want to be, that we hold our destiny in our own hands, that we are the captain of our heart and master of our destinies, that we are pilots in great control, voyagers of our own adventure…such and such things.

To this day, when I am not a kid no more and when I have already my own kids to tend to myself, I still have lots of inclination to build those small flying contraptions and let each of them rocketing towards low air and watch each of them fly away and see for myself how they perform. Its one small joy that have kept me busy when I was so much younger and even up to now. It’s one small joy I think I have imparted to my kids now that I have become a grown man. And its never small a joy to see them launch each paper planes that I have made for them and observed how gleeful they become. Some flew high and mighty while some did not. But such is just how the way things work.

This reminds me now starkly of one particular paper plane that I have made when I was a kid of about seven. I was in school at that time as recess time gave me and my classmates lots of time to play and mingle in the school’s wide-open field. I perhaps have crafted that paper plane so well that when I launched it towards the air, some vigorous wind had propelled it so strongly and its flight was so full and high. Some gush of strong wind had suddenly appeared and my paper plane went higher and higher and farther and farther away that I went running after it so strenuously. One classmate of mine saw how my paper plane performed on air that he also went chasing after it and I had to remind him incessantly that it was my plane and he’d better have his hands off it. I was huffing and puffing as I struggled to keep pace with the flying contraption that went gliding towards higher and higher altitude and my how I remember how gleeful I was to have ever seen a paper plane like that. I finally recovered the plane a good distance away from where I had launched it and as I held it in my hands, I remember to have thought so deep and was a little dumbfounded. What a plane, I had thought then. It was such a memorable flight for a memorable paper plane that in fact, to this day, that sort of thing was never replicated. Every now and then, even until now, I still could not forget about that one windy morning and I always try to replicate that flight but I just couldn’t anymore. Once in a while, I always try to build that perfect symmetrical paper plane and go out in the open yard and watch out for some sudden gush of wind and try to redo that “magic” once more. But till now, that “historic” flight is yet to be repeated. Maybe, I’d be lucky one of these days. Maybe I should try and try again.