Crafts, retrospect: paper airplanes, part 1

Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor mentions playing with paper airplanes.

There’s something iconic about paper airplanes. When I was a kid, they were a sign of good-humoured defiance, since only kids made them, and weren’t supposed to throw them. I recall, on one or two sitcoms, a teacher being the destination of one.

I learned how to make a simple one as a kid, then a babysitter showed me one that flew much better. In our 2-storey house in PEI, my sister and I would make paper airplanes, then fly them from the top of the stairs into the living room. We would do it for hours. Once again: we weren’t really supposed to, but our parents thought it was funny at the same time.

My sister and I learned such things as the fact that you could fold up one corner of the tail of a plane to cause it to fly around a corner. We would also put messages in the planes, hoping they’d drop out at the right moment. Rarely, they did.

Once in a while, one of us would produce a really good flyer. You couldn’t tell by looking if a plane would fly well, only by throwing it. However, when such a plane was produced, we’d hold onto it for a few days. Eventually, from crash-landing, the plane would be bent out of shape, and you’d need to make another.

To my knowledge, that house is still standing. I wonder if, today, children make paper airplanes in it, then climb the stairs and throw them into the living room?