LJ Idol Week 10: Icarus
All my entries this season are based on the webcomic I.C.Q., of which I am one of the co-creators, together with shurhaian. This week's host is Blake; you can read an introduction to him in my Introduction entry. Comments can be addressed to either myself or Blake. He'll answer unless doing so would spoil the comic.
A view from the ground up towards Blake and Charlie on top of a garage roof. Blake is closest to the edge, cardboard wings taped to his arms with gray tape, and he is wearing a red shirt. Charlie, an anthropomorphic caracal, is further in on the roof. Behind the garage is a large birch tree.
I never said I was a smart kid. But then, how many kids are, really?
There was this one time, especially, when I was really fucking dumb. I think both Mom, Charlie and I took some valuable lessons out of that one. At the time, I was in first grade, or just about to start it, and Charlie and I had discovered that it was possible to get onto the garage roof from the tree next to it if you just showed an adequate level of disregard for your own safety by climbing a little further out the branches reaching out above the garage than they could easily hold. Of course, we were kids and therefore immortal, so what was a bowing tree branch?
It wasn't enough that we could get "on top of the house", though. At some point we got the idea that starting off that high, if we only had a flying machine... Maybe it was from some nature show talking about mother birds knocking their fledgelings out of the nest to teach them to fly.
The theory was sound, to a pair of six-year-olds. I was a little better at throwing paper airplanes than Charlie, but if I stood on the ground by the garage and threw one, and he stood on the roof and threw one, his went further. Sometimes, at least, when it wasn't caught by a gust of wind that sent it crashing in any direction other than where he'd thrown it. So, with that experience in mind, we set to figuring out how we might be able to fly, ourselves.
Halloween wings wouldn't do, of course. Any kid knows that wings on your back doesn't make you any more capable of flying, just look at all the birds (as in people) out there! But if your arms are wings, like in birds (as in animals) and bats (again, the animals), well... Clearly we were onto something, there. So we dug through the garage and found an old cardboard box, one that some appliance or other had come in.
"Mom, can Charlie and I cut up that empty cardboard box out in the garage?" I asked. "It was empty."
"Sure," Mom said, because she generally let us have our fun and she probably figured we were going to use it to build a club house or something. "You'll only use scissors, right?"
"Mooom, I can't even reach the box cutter!" I protested at the utterly unfair implied accusation. Nevermind we'd probably been planning on dragging a chair over to get the box cutter down from its place on the pegboard.
So Charlie and I split the box open and unfolded it, then drew a pair of awesome wings on it. I mean, they were probably asymmetrical as all fuck, but I remember them as being awesome. And just to be sure we drew lightning bolts on them. Lightning bolts and flames make all machines work better, but fire is really hard to draw when you're six years old.
And we cut them out, and headed out to get them onto the garage roof. On the way out, I stopped by the kitchen, where Mom had something mechanical and disassembled spread out on newsprint all over the table, to inform her of the great leap childkind was just about to take thanks to Charlie and me.
"Mom, we made a flying machine and it's great and we're gonna go outside and test it now!"
"That's nice, dear," Mom replied, and scratched her eyebrow so she got oil from the machinery in her fur.
So Charlie and I went outside, and somehow managed to get both the wings and a roll of duct tape onto the garage roof without mishaps. This was Mom's duct tape, I'll note, which is nothing like the budget crap some people get. Once in place, Charlie and I (mostly Charlie, for obvious reasons) used about half the roll of tape to tape the maybe-if-you-squint-a-lot wing shaped pieces of cardboard to my arms.
And then I, full of faith, jumped off the roof, trying to hold my arms as stiff as I could.
From this, I learned a few things:
First, breaking your arm fucking hurts.
Second, jumping off the garage roof is never a good idea. No matter how many lightning bolts you drew on your awesome home-made flying machine.
Third, pulling duct tape off of fur hurts like a fucking bitch even with a broken arm.
And Mom?
Well, she learned to pay more attention to what I was telling her before calling anything I said "nice" or a "good idea" again. Which was a shame, because Charlie and I used to get away with a lot of really cool stuff that way.
Also, she cut down the tree next to the garage as soon as we got back from the hospital. Damn it.
Written for the "Home Game" of Season 7 of therealljidol. Please visit the topic to see what the current contestants have written on the subject of Icarus.
A view from the ground up towards Blake and Charlie on top of a garage roof. Blake is closest to the edge, cardboard wings taped to his arms with gray tape, and he is wearing a red shirt. Charlie, an anthropomorphic caracal, is further in on the roof. Behind the garage is a large birch tree.
I never said I was a smart kid. But then, how many kids are, really?
There was this one time, especially, when I was really fucking dumb. I think both Mom, Charlie and I took some valuable lessons out of that one. At the time, I was in first grade, or just about to start it, and Charlie and I had discovered that it was possible to get onto the garage roof from the tree next to it if you just showed an adequate level of disregard for your own safety by climbing a little further out the branches reaching out above the garage than they could easily hold. Of course, we were kids and therefore immortal, so what was a bowing tree branch?
It wasn't enough that we could get "on top of the house", though. At some point we got the idea that starting off that high, if we only had a flying machine... Maybe it was from some nature show talking about mother birds knocking their fledgelings out of the nest to teach them to fly.
The theory was sound, to a pair of six-year-olds. I was a little better at throwing paper airplanes than Charlie, but if I stood on the ground by the garage and threw one, and he stood on the roof and threw one, his went further. Sometimes, at least, when it wasn't caught by a gust of wind that sent it crashing in any direction other than where he'd thrown it. So, with that experience in mind, we set to figuring out how we might be able to fly, ourselves.
Halloween wings wouldn't do, of course. Any kid knows that wings on your back doesn't make you any more capable of flying, just look at all the birds (as in people) out there! But if your arms are wings, like in birds (as in animals) and bats (again, the animals), well... Clearly we were onto something, there. So we dug through the garage and found an old cardboard box, one that some appliance or other had come in.
"Mom, can Charlie and I cut up that empty cardboard box out in the garage?" I asked. "It was empty."
"Sure," Mom said, because she generally let us have our fun and she probably figured we were going to use it to build a club house or something. "You'll only use scissors, right?"
"Mooom, I can't even reach the box cutter!" I protested at the utterly unfair implied accusation. Nevermind we'd probably been planning on dragging a chair over to get the box cutter down from its place on the pegboard.
So Charlie and I split the box open and unfolded it, then drew a pair of awesome wings on it. I mean, they were probably asymmetrical as all fuck, but I remember them as being awesome. And just to be sure we drew lightning bolts on them. Lightning bolts and flames make all machines work better, but fire is really hard to draw when you're six years old.
And we cut them out, and headed out to get them onto the garage roof. On the way out, I stopped by the kitchen, where Mom had something mechanical and disassembled spread out on newsprint all over the table, to inform her of the great leap childkind was just about to take thanks to Charlie and me.
"Mom, we made a flying machine and it's great and we're gonna go outside and test it now!"
"That's nice, dear," Mom replied, and scratched her eyebrow so she got oil from the machinery in her fur.
So Charlie and I went outside, and somehow managed to get both the wings and a roll of duct tape onto the garage roof without mishaps. This was Mom's duct tape, I'll note, which is nothing like the budget crap some people get. Once in place, Charlie and I (mostly Charlie, for obvious reasons) used about half the roll of tape to tape the maybe-if-you-squint-a-lot wing shaped pieces of cardboard to my arms.
And then I, full of faith, jumped off the roof, trying to hold my arms as stiff as I could.
From this, I learned a few things:
First, breaking your arm fucking hurts.
Second, jumping off the garage roof is never a good idea. No matter how many lightning bolts you drew on your awesome home-made flying machine.
Third, pulling duct tape off of fur hurts like a fucking bitch even with a broken arm.
And Mom?
Well, she learned to pay more attention to what I was telling her before calling anything I said "nice" or a "good idea" again. Which was a shame, because Charlie and I used to get away with a lot of really cool stuff that way.
Also, she cut down the tree next to the garage as soon as we got back from the hospital. Damn it.
Written for the "Home Game" of Season 7 of therealljidol. Please visit the topic to see what the current contestants have written on the subject of Icarus.