How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself (14 page)

Teachers used to take these away from us, too.

Then I used to make a different kind; it's my recollection that I invented this kind, but chances are that's just my memory, and I probably saw it in a book or learned it from another kid. Anyhow, the idea was to make a paper airplane that looked more like an airplane. You start off the same way, folding down the center and opening up, folding the two ends in.

Then you take the point and bend it back so that the very point evens up with the cross line.

Fold the whole thing over, and then fold back the two wings a little ways up from the first original center fold. Fold it back in half again and with scissors, or by tearing, make an airplane shape, like this.

Now fold the wings out, and fold the little tail pieces out. Make the tear and make the tab like before.

These fly much more like an airplane than the old kind, and you can even experiment with bending the tail pieces up to make the plane loop the loop, or one side up to make it go in a circle. Just generally, with these or with gliders that you can get at an airplane model store, to make a plane loop the loop, throw it down, to make it go in a circle and come back to you, hold it in your right hand if you're right-handed, your left if you're left-handed, with the bottom of the plane toward you and the wings straight up and down and sort of sweep it backhanded right across your own front.

There's a way of making a helicopter, too. By the way, when I was a kid, it was clearly understood that there never would ever be a real full-size, man-carrying helicopter. It had been very carefully proven, scientifically, that it was impossible ever to make one that would get off the ground. I don't know what happened to the scientists who proved this: maybe they met the scientist who had proved that, by all the laws of nature, it was impossible for a bee to fly. A bee just wasn't made right to fly. I'm not making fun of scientists; it wasn't so long ago that all the scientific theories in the world were based on the theory that it was impossible to split the atom. Well, of course. Everything is impossible until it's done. Then whatever has been done is possible, and there's a new thing that's impossible.

The helicopters we made weren't really helicopters. They just looked something like what we now know as helicopters. They were made from a piece of paper, and they worked very much the same way as the maple wings I told you about when I was telling about polly-noses. Take a piece of stiff paper or thin cardboard, the size isn't important, and cut it to this shape.

Bend the wings back, and fold over the bottom part so that the bottom part is three thicknesses thick, and glue it or staple it or paper-clip it.

Take this up to a high place, and let it drop.

If you can get a hold of a chicken or a turkey wishbone, some chewing gum, a burnt kitchen match and a rubber band, you can make a kind of silly thing. You chew this wishbone good and clean, and if you've got the patience, let it dry until it's good and stiff. Chew the gum until it's good and chewy. Take a little wad of it and stick it on the wishbone where there's that flat place. (If you live on a tarred street and the tar gets sticky in the summer, tar is even better for this than chewing gum.
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) Loop the rubber band over the two arms of the wishbone, out near the end,
put a match in between the rubber band, twist it up good so that if you let it go it would whirl around to the other side of the wishbone and be stopped, only don't let it go.