Paper Airplanes and the Almighty

From the Family Series: Stories about our childhood – what we did, what we didn’t get away with, and what we learned from it.

Back ‘in the day’ when my brothers and I were small, like 8, 9 and 10ish, we harbored a love for paper airplanes. I don’t remember how it it got started, but we formulated a plan. My guess is that my older brother was the project manager of this, but I can’t be sure, and don’t remember. He was often the brains of our exploits.

We were attending a good sized Baptist Church in Greensboro, NC. It had a large, long auditorium with a typical balcony in the back boasting a thick brass bar that ran the length of the balcony, for the protection of wayward parishioners that drew to close to the edge. The brass bar also hit me about eye level when I was sitting down, and blocked a lot of my view.

On this particular Sunday, we were being corralled and guarded by our grandparents, due to Mom and Dad being in the choir. The three of us, my older and younger brothers and myself, decided that flying paper airplanes was cool, but there was always the frustration of not being able to get them high enough, thus flight time was very short.
Doesn’t it make sense to fly them from high off the ground?
Sure it does. It makes perfect sense. So where to launch our test flights?

THE CHURCH BALCONY!

Yeah! Great idea. (We thought…)

So, on said Sunday, we three split up and started gathering church bulletins. For those who might not know these bulletins are usually an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper folded in half with a color image of something spiritual or Holy on the front, along with the church’s name. On the inside there were announcements, hymn numbers for the service, and events that were happening that week.

We were not interested in content but in ‘availability and quantity’.

As we started gathering bulletins, I remember seeing one older lady who knew us. She commented as I went flying past, “Oh isn’t that lovely! The Kennon children are handing out bulletins.”

“Ha!” Well, in my mind, ‘Blue Hair’ was in for a shock, and it wasn’t because they weren’t going to like what was going to occur. It was because they all would be thrilled to see the show! (Boy was I stupid…)

Between the three of us we collected at least twenty bulletins and headed up to the balcony, which surely was one hundred feet off the ground. (Seemed that way to me…) It was the perfect launch pad for our mission.

This was back in the ’70’s so from on high, in our perch, we had a literal sea of big hair and mutton chops below us. What a landing field!
This was going to be great.

The construction phase was a little tricky. Mom and Dad were away getting robes on for the big choir special, which left us with our grandparents up top.

I remember as people were filing around us, that we were heavy into construction and concealment… we didn’t want to spoil the surprise! How we didn’t get caught, I could never say, but everyone was doing his/her own thing and we were over there, sparks flying, working our assembly line of aircraft. We had blunt nose loop-de-loop planes, fast, sleek, straight-arrow planes, and just about anything in between that would fly. I think in total we were able to get about six planes each ready to fly by the time church was starting.

The order of service in a big Baptist church goes something like this:
The musicians (that would be ‘Blue Hair’ on the organ, and ‘Big Hair’ on the piano) would kick things off with a rousing hymn piano/organ duet. Our plan, as laid out by our project manager brother, was to wait till the ‘special’, which is the time when we are twenty minutes or so into the service, and the choir is singing a special song they’ve prepared. This isn’t a congregation participatory hymn. We had to wait through the proverbial first congregational hymn, the welcome speech, which usually included the ‘shake someone’s hand and say hello’, then the announcements, then another congregational hymn.

We were psyched and ready. Never in the history of paper airplanes had anything like this been seen! We finished the second hymn and started the stand alone music while the offering was being taken. There were glorious smiles on faces around us as the spirit was moving. Did they know what was about to happen? We could see our mom’s bright red hair and our dad’s side burns from our altitude, if we bent down below the safety bar. This was going to be amazing!

The offering finished, and all was quiet and still. The Florida Street Baptist Church Choir was about to kick it up a notch and we, the three of us, had the best accompaniment. The choir stood, the rather large choir director had his hands ready to bring on the power, in one massive stroke, that would fill the cavernous auditorium with heavenly music.

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock…
It was time.

Down went his hands, ‘Blue Hair’ and ‘Big Hair’ started playing, and then in quick succession, faster than the Navy can launch a F-15 off the deck of the Ronald Reagan, we three launched our assault! Eighteen paper airplanes were propelled by boy power into the air, high above every hair-do the ’70’s could generate!
It was amazing!
The sharp nosed planes found an angle down once they reached their Initial Point. Down they went, landing into hair of every style imaginable. Heads started to turn as the loop-de-loops spun, rolled, and looped over and over. We waited till every plane made contact with the ground, pews, or people.

It was a Heavenly moment for paper airplanes. We succeeded! We were thrilled with our accomplishment.

However, for those who understand this next part, my mom’s red hair seemed to drain down into her face, and she had a not-so-Heavenly glow to her complexion. I leaned down so I could see her face and made the decision to sit tall so I would not have to look death in the eyes again. The choir didn’t miss a beat except my mother’s mouth, which was wide open as if she were holding a high note. However, that… was… not… the… case. The congregation wasn’t in tune with them either. They were totally taken aback by the assault on the auditorium and by us. They had forgotten about the choir.

Sorta’ like a curtain being pulled aside, there was a slow realization that maybe this might not have been such a good idea.

I know… can you believe it? Duh….

The naked truth couldn’t be hidden from the onlookers, and we had a number of upset women plucking aircraft from their perfect hair-do. The red ‘beaming’ from my mother’s eyes rivaled superman’s eyes burning through steel.

“This isn’t good…”

Then the grandparents were upset… because this happened on their watch, and they were in trouble with my folks. In fact, other than some of the kids in the church, who had immediately elevated us to hero status, we had a hostile crowd around and under us. I was really shocked that no one was appreciative of our experiment on how long paper airplanes could fly, given enough altitude.

“What’s wrong with these people?”

I can also say it is a pretty cool thing to see one of your airplanes sitting atop some woman’s big hair and she doesn’t even know it’s there!

Well, the grandparents pulled us into lockdown and solitary ’till church was over, and the executions could take place.

You know what, that was the quietest ride home from church. I am pretty sure no one was breathing and our normal banter from the back seat was totally absent! Trouble had brewed and the three of us would be facing trail, judgment and discipline.

I started praying to the Almighty to pull off a Red Sea rescue. For the record, it never came. If this was about the Jews and the Egyptians, well, Pharaoh and his army won this round.
I come from a family that believed in old-school discipline. We didn’t get the ‘take away your games’ stuff, or ‘you can’t ride your bike’. It was pure, simple and to the point… or to word this more correctly… to the butt! I think this paddling lasted for three days and three nights. 🙂

Though it wasn’t the intent, I can honestly say going to church was causing me to pray more fervently and more often. Amen, brothers and sisters!

You know, for a number of weeks I dreaded going to church, because it always somehow ended badly for us, ’till one lone day, it dawned on me, “It’s not church, it’s the things were are doing ,that was causing the ‘after church party’ at the Kennon house to go so badly.”

Live, learn, and prayers answered!

See you on the road,