Now most people would like to believe that I sprung fully formed from my mother’s womb, but it simply is not the case. I, like you faithful reader, was once a child. A tow-headed child with skinny legs and dreams, yes, dreams, you bloodsucking vampires (I’m kidding, I love you bastards. I’ve been drinking, to be honest, and I’m being conversational here, so bear with me) and here is a wonderful tale from that time.
There was a kite store that briefly operated in the town I grew up in. I loved kite-flying, I thought it weird and magical, and there was a particular kite there that had piqued my interest. It was a firebird, quite literally, a dark ‘V’ shape of black nylon with streamers of red and orange shooting off the wings, and a sleek head and beak squinting forward from the point. I visited the bird several times a week for a month but I couldn’t afford to buy it. It was a serious kite, not like the junk from The Talbots Five and Dime that I’d flown previously, but an actual kite with a price around one hundred dollars, an almost insurmountable figure for a ten year-old. Imagine, though, how such a beast would cut through the air. Sadly, imaging was all I could do.
Until one sunny day when I was walking from the kite shop to the candy store to shoplift candy (yes, I know, that isn’t heartwarming but I was kleptomaniacal in that candy store). I noticed something skittering in the breeze on the pavement in front of me. Ever the inquisitive child, I bent down to investigate. It was four twenty dollar bills, loooking ATM fresh, blowing together down the street.
I glanced around. There was no one in sight. Just the street in front of me, my dream kite behind me, and a larceny waiting to happen in front of me.
Now some might find themselves in a moral dilemma here. Do you take the money and bring it to the nearest grown-up? Do you let it blow down the street to someone more needy? Or would you run down the street to the police, cash in hand, to turn it in? Me, I grabbed the cash and stuffed it in my pocket. My mother didn’t raise fools, and when I asked at the kite store if they’d do a lay-away for me they said yes.
Later, my mother having underwritten the rest, I took my firebird kite out to the back field. Let me tell you it was magnificent. And whether it was God or a careless woman who wouldn’t be able to feed her children because she dropped her money, I was thankful.
