History III

Whenever the subject of the contest came up, the mispronunciation peppered my speech like cayenne in a cookie.

"I'm going to win duriation aloft."

"The world record for duriation is eighteen seconds."

"These flaps, right here, they give you a longer flight duriation."

Between recess and lunch, we had writing, which was actually mostly spelling. The week before, everyone scored a hundred on the test, and, as a reward, Mister Wayerski announced that our class would have a paper airplane contest. He produced a huge paperback book, entitled The Great International Paper Airplane Book, about a famous contest held by a magazine called Scientific American, way back in the late sixties.

He passed the book around the classroom and explained the four events: duration aloft, distance flown, aerobatics and origami. We would learn to spell aeronautical terms, and write about our airplanes. At this, a collective groan rose from the class, but I was distracted, leafing through the magnificent book, turning the giant pages, examining the winning designs. I know I tried to pay attention, but that must have been when I confused the pronunciation of the word meaning "length of time".

After that, every recess and lunch, I stayed inside the classroom, poring over the book, mulling which tournaments to enter. I dismissed the origami competition, as being meaningless, beneath my dignity - these planes didn't even need to fly. Aerobatic entries would be judged by a panel of students, scored on the intricacy of their flight, and variety of maneuvers performed.

True, honest, objective data would determine the winners of distance and duration. I suspected distance flown would boil down to the thrower's skill and strength. Me, I could barely throw a baseball. If I wanted to win (and I truly did, with all my heart), I would have to focus on the duriation aloft event. The instructions for folding the original winning design were included in the book, and I studied, practiced, and made it my own. I invented a clever, and, apparently novel, trick for forming the difficult initial folds required by the plans.

The day before the competition, after the morning recess, Mister Wayerski pulled me aside. My fifth grade teacher, with his mutton chops, reminded me of Burt Reynolds, and I knew he tried really hard to be the fun teacher at Happy Valley. I had heard that he used to be a P.E. teacher, a rumor supported by the games he taught us to play, on the grass right outside our classroom door.

He laid a hairy hand on my shoulder and leaned in, whispering, "What's your best..." He paused, looking around, conspiratorially, "...duration, so far?" He drew the word out into three long syllables. Oh... I get it.

I appreciated this kindness, but my face went hot anyway. My glasses, the frames a regrettable tortoiseshell pattern, began to fog, especially the thicker lens on the right, the eye with the astigmatism. I blankly looked up at him, his toothy smile hazily framed by his thick sideburns. I didn't know any other adults with sideburns. His were like black carpet.

"Come on, you can tell me. I can keep a secret."

"Um... I don't know. I don't have a stopwatch."

"Hmmm. Well, we'll have to find out." He released my shoulder, straightening up. I took this as a signal to take my seat. When everyone was seated, he waited for us to quiet down.

"I know we're supposed to have a spelling test today..." He had our rapt attention.

Mister Wayerski explained that we would be having a flight trial, a practice run, for the actual contest the next day. We had thirty minutes in which to create our entries, starting with a standard sheet of notebook paper, after which, the whole class would march up to the gymnasium to test them out. I took my time, folding carefully, ironing the creases perfectly flat with the side of a number two pencil. Using blunted safety scissors, I carefully cut identically matched flaps into the rear edge of the wings, and holding the plane up at eye level, I confirmed an absolute symmetry from all directions. After a few test flights, steady glides between the rows of desks, I was ready.

I used the remaining time to spy on my chief rival, Rick Lenaburg. Rick was not someone you would peg as a strong student. No one, except, possibly, his fawning toady, Tod Cernitch, would have considered copying from any of his tests. However, on matters important, Rick was the undisputed authority. If you were waffling between the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle or the Six Million Dollar Man Action Figure, ask Rick. He dominated bombardment, our playground dodge-ball game, delivering stinging attacks, the thrumming, crimson ball jouncing off your head or back. If you needed a BB gun, he was your man. Rick was a fearless BMX pioneer, jumping a bicycle he had built from spare parts. He once broke his collarbone, leaping from the climber on the playground, using his coat as a makeshift hang-glider, in a sixty-knot wind. If anyone could make a winning paper airplane, Rick Lenaburg could.

Curiosity, edged with nervous awe, propelled me to his desk, where sat three paper planes, to my one. Proudly, he showed me a sleek dart, wings folded repeatedly to the thickness of a ruler, clearly intended to dominate the distance category. I knew I was eyeing a champion. The second airplane, he told me, was an accident.

"When I throw this one, it spirals and loops - crazy! And, I figured... 'What the heck'?" So, an aerobatic entry, too. Rick, grinning, was more excited by this classroom activity than I could ever remember.

The final paper dart on his desk appeared identical to mine. Indistinguishable. I spun my head to verify that my entry was still on my desk where I had left it. It was. Any confidence I had felt, just moments before, drained from me like air from a leaking balloon. My face was hot again, my shoulders sagged.

"Well, good luck, Rick."

"Yeah, you too."

I returned to my desk, and sat, staring at my plane, and, suddenly, it was time. We gathered up our airplanes. Our teacher quietly led us, single-file, out the classroom door, through the resource center, - for reasons unknown, that's what they called the library - and up the ramp, to the gym.

It went quickly, Mister Wayerski imposing an improvised order on the proceedings. The origami portion was omitted, to "preserve originality". Of course, we went in alphabetical order, by last names. I thought Rick's aerobatic performance was the best, but, because it crashed into the floor, most of the class voted for Rhonda Calvin . Lined up along one wall, between folded lunch tables, the distance competitors took turns hurling their planes across the gym. As expected, Rick won, beating the next-best effort by twenty feet, almost hitting the far wall.

Few students, vying for duration aloft, were able to exceed eight seconds of flight. From the center of the basketball court, planes were thrown straight up, some falling back, straight down, barely missing the thrower. Rick took his turn, crouching like a coiled spring, his plane brushing the linoleum. At the end of the countdown, he exploded upwards, sneakers off the floor, arms windmilling. His plane described a tight loop fifteen feet above his head. It looked like it might loop again, but, lacking airspeed, it stalled and settled into a slow, dipping glide that carried it under the basketball hoop. When it touched down, Mister Wayerski clicked the stopwatch with an exaggerated chop of his arm.

"Twelve-point-five seconds." Crap.

I tried to duplicate Rick Lenaburg's athletic, off-balance launch, but the stance was awkward. I relaxed into a more-natural pose and, at the signal, pitched my glider with a grunt. Our planes' common pedigree was evidenced by similar, looping flights. After a heart-stopping stall, my plane, too, nosed into gentle, undulating descent. I held my breath, fists clenched, contorting my body, bowler-like, as if some kind of tormented physical effort might prolong the flight.

The plane hit the wall, with a crisp snap, four feet above the rubber baseboard. For a I moment, I believed it might glance off, fantastically remaining aloft. We watched it skid down the wall, crashing, thud, as Mister Wayerski dropped his arm again. I exhaled slowly, cheeks puffing.

"Eleven seconds."

I retrieved my plane, crumpling it in between my palms. Second place was still losing, but I wrung some satisfaction from beating Tod Cernitch, who, surprisingly, scored a 10.5. I suspected he used a plane built by Rick, to their mutual benefit. I was sick of paper airplanes. Our teacher congratulated the winners as the bell for the first lunch period rang. We hurriedly collected our lunches from the classroom, reconvening in the gym, now arrayed with the folding tables.

When Bob, the bus driver, dropped me off, I ran home, my backpack bouncing on my shoulders. After gulping from a carton of cold milk in the fridge, I fished a stack of paper from the double drawer in mom's desk. Kneeling at a side table, a stylish shade of avocado, molded from sturdy plastic, I set to the task of producing a squadron of duplicate paper airplanes. I knew, intuitively, that the key to the design's success lay in the details of the flaps.

Mom was in the kitchen, making spaghetti, and I excitedly detailed the drama of the paper airplane contest. Patiently, I explained my experiment, the comparison of different aileron sizes, the little paper flaps that inexplicably affected both the glide ratio and initial altitude.

"Too much lift, and the plane will loop too much... Less lift and it will fly higher, but it won't stay in the air long enough." I was thinking out loud.

"Umm Hmm." She wasn't even paying attention. "Dinnertime. Wash your hands, find your sisters."

Spaghetti was a favorite, but I ate silently, flying paper dogfights in my head. Dad wasn't home yet, and the women in my family had no interest in scientific sport. After the dishwasher was loaded, I returned to the little green table, moving it, and my fleet, into the center of the living room.

I resumed by cutting paired slits in the trailing edges of the planes' wings, adding ailerons of differing dimensions: wide, narrow, short, and long. When finished, I methodically threw each plane several times, weighing the merits of each, stashing the rejected versions under the table, at my knees. My brute-force approach yielded a plane with long narrow flaps, one marginally wider than the other. When thrown hard, the flaps bent down, allowing the plane to climb, but as speed was lost, the inherent springiness in the paper returned the flaps to a normal, high-lift orientation. Additionally, a wider flap steered the plane in a gentle spiral, keeping it from hitting a wall.

I could toss the plane toward the fireplace, only to have it bank over the couch and return to my hand, boomerang-like. On my knees, in the living room, I flew missions over the furniture, past the picture window, again and again. I had mastered aerodynamics, physical laws were my playthings, this aircraft did my bidding.

Experimentally, I gave the missile a mighty heave, banking its wings into the throw. For a moment, I feared it would clip the textured shag, cartwheeling across the green carpet. Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, I delighted in my new-found powers, as the plane climbed, up, up, wheeling toward my head. A warm glee smoldered in my smug soul, when, confidant that the paper airplane would complete two circuits around the room, I ducked my head.

WHAM.

Reeling, my hands went to my face, which had just collided with the stout and immovable little green plastic table. The room tilted crazily, my heavy, dorky glasses knocked askew. I adjusted the lenses and my fingers came away, bloody. The vision in my left eye, my good eye, clouded, my nose was warm, wet. I tasted iron. Carefully, head tilted back, I stood up, stumbled into the kitchen.

"MOM!"

At the sink, I discarded my glasses, dousing my face with water from the tap. Every splash on the stainless steel was tinged with red. I ripped a paper towel from the dispenser under the cabinet, and plastered it against my brow. Mom swung the saloon doors open.

"What on Earth... Oh, dear." I couldn't see her expression, couldn't gauge her anger. "Jesus H. Christ... Let me get a towel."

I examined my face in the bathroom mirror. My stupid glasses had slammed into the bridge of my nose, and the gaping cut gushed when I moved the washcloth aside, to dab at the drying blood on my cheek and mouth.

"I think you need stitches."

Dad still wasn't home. Mom rounded up my sisters and we all went to the emergency room in the Dasher wagon. It bears mention that our Volkswagen was a certain shade of green: avocado. Let the record also reflect that I had never, in my short life, tasted the creamy and nutritious flesh of that exotic fruit, nor, I believe, had either of my parents, but I was intimately familiar with the decorator tint.

Sewing my flesh back together, the doctor chuckled quietly when I detailed the circumstances of my visit to the emergency room. Four neat loops of silk closed the split, but my nose was so swollen that my glasses would not fit my face. Secretly, I hoped they never would.

The next day, I stood up in writing class, and related my trip to the emergency room. I held up my paper airplane, and pointed to the tiny smudge of blood on the left wing. Mister Wayerski called me his little scientist, and joked about dangerous laboratory experiments. Afterwards, Rick showed me the scar on his knee, from a bike wreck.

Shortly, once again, we marched to the gym.