Today, June 15, is Fly a Kite Day. It is not National Kite Flying Day, which is February 8, so all kite flying must be strictly local today. It is also not Go Fly a Kite Day; if your kite flying must include going, you should do that instead on the third Sunday in April. But if you have (or can make) a kite, and you also have sufficient space, the right amount of wind, and otherwise agreeable environmental conditions, you should by all means combine those ingredients today.
Like so many things that should have brought me joy in my childhood, kites brought me grief. One year when I was in Cub Scouts, there was a father-son activity to build kites and then have a kite-flying contest. My dad wasn’t much into father-son interactions or kite building. So he went out and bought a plastic kite at a store and we assembled it together. Everyone else, of course, had “real” (made-from-scratch) kites, because doing the engineering was sort of the point of the exercise, so I was embarrassed at mine. But my dad didn’t think the little spool of string that came with the kite was adequate, so he brought a huge spool we kept in the kitchen. And—solely because our string was longer than anyone else’s—my dumb, store-bought kite went the highest and won the competition. I got the prize, but I’d never been so ashamed in my life, because I knew I didn’t deserve it.
So that sort of ruined my whole relationship with kites, but I hope you won’t let my sad story interfere with your enjoyment of the day!
