i scoured my harddrive to find this story. i discovered that my home directory contains over one and a half gigs of junk. i have over 4500 files that are newer than the 24th of june. but i could not find this story. turns out it's because when i wrote this story down it was with those archaic implements known as pen and paper, and when it was finished, i folded the paper (actually two sheets, i think) in half and then again into thirds, stuffed the not-quite-orgami creation into another specially folded piece of paper, activated the glue with my saliva, and left the whole meticulously crafted artifice out on the front porch for the mailman to whisk away over the thousand miles between me and my best friend in the universe. this was because in the two weeks after we moved to our new place, i had no access to my computer. i wrote actual letters, and talked to people on the phone. it's a whole different world... but that in itself is another source of a particularly enjoyable insanity, and a completely different story to be told at another time.
so, needless to say, i have to type the whole thing in from scratch.
courtnee brought this kite to our house over on cramer one day. it was supposed to be a gift, but she didn't give it to the guy. instead, it found its way behind a piece of furniture in our living room, never to be seen again... until we moved out in july. we pulled out the couch, and there was this kite on the floor.
"whose kite is this?"
"not mine."
"oh. anybody want it?"
"nah, throw it away."
so i picked up the kite and the string and the crosspiece and started to take it out to the trashcan... and then i looked at it. this was a brand new kite. never, ever been flown before. not a single thing wrong with it. why should i throw it away? who would want a kite?
well, immediately the little girl down the street came to mind. i'd seen her playing catch with what are probably her brothers all summer, making chalk drawings and all that... hey, if i were a little kid i'd love to have a kite. (as it was i grew up in the woods on top of a hill, where kites were rather useless....)
so i walked back into the house with the kite, looking for a pen and some paper. this was not an easy task, given that we've torn the house to hell and back in the process of moving and cleaning, but i found a piece of paper from the same pad that i wrote sideshow's autograph on, white paper with a Blizzard Entertainment watermark. this particular piece had the drawing and plans we made for the unfinished soundproofing frames in the bandroom. i wrote, in large capital letters on the blank side:
I AM A
BRAND
NEW KITE.
I NEED
A HOME.
and then i took the kite and the string and the clear plastic crosspiece and the hastily fashioned note for a walk down the street.
oh, by the way, it was 10:30pm on a saturday night in july. it had just gotten dark.
down from our house, second from the the east end of our block, to the third building from the east end of the next block, across the street fro the elementary school. the front door was open, but the porch light was off, and the porch was deserted. i walked up the sidewalk stairs that no longer bore the chalk pleadings for star wars, and up to the dark porch. there was a chair by the door. i lifted upone of the chair's legs and placed the kite under it, putting the chair leg squarely in the middle of everything so neither kite nor note might blow away.
and then i walked back down the street.
i hope nobody was frightened by the long-haired hoodlum leaving things on the front porch... but i never got to see if the girl got the kite. i'm sure they found it, for it wasn't there the next day. but i don't live on that street anymore...
Mon Aug 23 23:08:25 EDT 1999
