After church every Sunday I’d clown around with Jim Ross, who was my age and equally amenable to getting in trouble. One day we went up in the balcony in the sanctuary, which provided a great view from the rear of that imposing room. You could see all the pews down below, the high rafter beams up above, and the massive organ pipes in the front towering over the pulpit.
In other words, the balcony was the ideal place to throw paper airplanes after the service was over. We made them out of the church bulletins.
On that particular day I made an unforgettable, miraculous throw. Rather than heave my paper airplane for distance, I threw for height. I wanted to see my plane go up, up, up, and then come nose-diving down into the pews. But that’s not what happened. I threw my plane as high as I could, and it… landed on top of one of the cross-beams near the ceiling of the sanctuary. And it stayed there, balanced precariously on the wooden beam, fifty feet above the pews. It was the kind of throw you couldn’t repeat if you had a million chances.
That paper airplane stayed where it landed, resting on that high beam, for years. You could see it from the pews if you looked up, and there was no way for anybody to remove it. So it was a source of constant amusement for me and everybody else we pointed it out to.
And here’s the weirdest part of the story. I swear this is 100 percent true.
About ten years after I threw the plane, I was visiting the church with Moop one day because some friends of hers were working there. While she was chatting with them, I wandered off and strolled into the empty sanctuary. I looked up into the rafters, trying to spot my paper airplane.
But this time it wasn’t there. Someone had finally figured out a way to remove it. It wasn’t too surprising.
But as I was walking out of the sanctuary, I noticed something on one of the pews. Looked like a piece of paper. On closer inspection, it looked like a paper airplane. And as I picked it up, I realized it was… that paper airplane. I unfolded it and read the date on the church bulletin. Yep. It was ten years old. It was my airplane.
