Flight

Be forewarned, like all but one of my earlier stories, there is absolutely no sex here, in fact, not even so much as a kiss. This is more of a teenage coming of age story. Also, like one of earlier stories, I have borrowed an idea from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

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When you were growing up, was there a kid that everybody laughed at, a kid who was always the last to be picked for teams, a kid who couldn't catch a fly ball if his life depended on it? Maybe he was fat and wore glasses. Maybe he was a klutz or he just looked a bit goofy or acted a bit strange. I suspect there was probably at least one in every class and if you were the one, I sure as hell feel sorry for you. I know it wasn't pleasant.

Some of these kids, the different ones, made up for it by just trying harder. Sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they just laughed along with everyone else when they failed. Others buried their heads in books or computers and over compensated by being smarter than everyone else. These were the kids that ended up starting Silicon Valley. I mean honestly ladies, do you really consider Bill Gates handsome?

These kids, these different kids, didn't hang out with the popular ones, they often clung to each other. Besides, the popular ones weren't into computer programming, they were into football and baseball and cars and girls and all that was well beyond the different ones. The different ones had each other and if it wasn't enough, if they day dreamed about being popular, they at least had each other and they made do.

Except for Ralph. Ralph was a klutz. Ralph had two left feet, was nearsighted and chubby and probably couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag. To make matters worse, he wasn't quite smart enough to fit in with the other smarter different kids. That was not to say he was dumb, just that instead of getting A's and B's like the really smart kids, he got mostly B's and C's. He wasn't dumb but he was not a genius either.

Ralph had another strike against him. His home life wasn't the best. Some different kids are lucky enough to have caring parents who understand. These great parents encourage their kids to make the most of whatever gifts they have and try harder to be the best that they can be and not get upset if they don't always succeed.

Ralph's parents weren't that good. They were more indifferent. They had their own problems and really couldn't deal with his. His mother had battled depression most of her life and had self medicated way too many times. She had also over indulged in just about everything at one time or another, including sex and although she had never told Ralph, she honestly didn't know who his biological father was. The man she ended up marrying knew that and dealt with it in his own way but the ups and downs of his mother just wore him out and left him little time for Ralph.

To be fair, it could have been worse. There was no abuse. There was a roof over his head, food on the table and presents at Christmas and birthdays, but there wasn't a lot of that huggy, kissy stuff either. Nobody every really said "I love you" to him whether it was parents, relatives or anyone else.

Ralph grew up pretty much on his own as an only child in the age before Facebook and Twitter, the internet and cell phones, home computers and cable TV. It was a big town in a rural area in a time where most people didn't even lock their doors and where everybody pretty much trusted everyone.

It really wasn't a bad life but when you're a different kid, trying to find your own way with little guidance from anyone, even kids your own age, it can be a bit daunting, even for the best and wisest of kids and when you're constantly reminded that you can't keep up with the other kids, not as smart as them, not as big or as handsome or anything else, it can get to you. It started early on getting to Ralph.

He knew about this thing called "depression". He heard all about it from his mother and saw her deal with it as best she could. There just weren't too many good drugs back then. Electro-shock was common. That scared him. It also scared his mother. She just tried as best she could.

He also knew about "suicide". It had been whispered around the house but never talked about in front of him. He read about it in the library when he could. He wanted to ask questions but there was no one he could turn to for answers, no one he could really trust.

At the age of sixteen, there came another setback in his life. At first, it didn't seem like such a big deal. The company where his father worked closed up. His father was lucky though, he found another job almost right away. The only problem was, it paid less, not a lot less, but enough to make a difference. His father was going to have to postpone buying a new car like he had done every three years since Ralph could remember. The year he turned sixteen would have been that year too and his father had agreed that instead of trading in the hideous old Buick, he would let Ralph drive it. Ralph would be one of the lucky ones. He would actually have a car and if it wasn't actually his out right, he could at least claim that he didn't have to share it with anyone. He was going to be popular!

It didn't sink in right away. After all, finances were not something his parents actually talked about in front of him. It was just something that slowly became apparent to him. He was going to continue to be laughed at and he was not going to become popular. He would be stuck riding his three speed bike while everyone else was out driving. To be sure, he did get his license. He did get to drive the old Buick from time to time, but it was never his car, always his father's. He had to move the seat back, make sure the tank was filled and change the radio station back to where his father liked it. It was not Ralph's car and he would never be able to give Mary Beth a ride home in it.

Like all teenagers, when the hormones kicked in, he developed an interest in the opposite sex. There was the usual chit chat and telling of outrageous stories and viewing of hand me down magazines among the young men and bold faced lies about who had done what and with whom. Mostly though, the reality was just a lot of wishful idle daydreaming.

Ralph daydreamed about Mary Beth. I know it's cliché but she actually was a cheerleader. She was one of the popular ones. In fairness to her, she was reasonably cute but her big problem was that she knew it and played on it to get pretty much whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it. While Ralph may have daydreamed about her, she certainly never daydreamed about him and if he had ever entered her thoughts, and there is no evidence to suggest that he ever did, she would have considered it a nightmare.

To his credit, Ralph did realize that trying to go out with Mary Beth was going to be a complete waste of time. At sixteen, he had already been laughed at far too many times to willingly put himself through a useless effort like that. Why bother to try if you're only going to fail anyway became something of a motto for him.

The really sad thing of it is, there was actually a girl that would have gone out with him if he had asked her. Susan was a bit of a female version of him only less extreme. Yes, she was chubby and wore glasses, but she was cheerful and pleasant and smart but not too smart. She would occasionally admit to even liking Ralph but she was also very shy and instead of asking him, kept waiting for him to ask her. Whatever subtle signals she may have sent, were clearly far too subtle for the socially inept Ralph to decipher.

And so it happened that in the fall of his junior year in high school, Ralph decided that he had had enough of life. It was time to call it quits, time to stop the bullying, the laughing, the ignoring and all the other nonsense. He was going to quit life itself.

He thought about how to do it. He knew his mother had taken drugs, but then she had survived. He didn't really have easy access to them unless he stole from his mother and he wasn't entirely sure what she was taking anyway.

He supposed he could find a gun somewhere. Lots of people around there had them but his father didn't. Hanging just didn't seem like a good way to go either.

There was an abandoned quarry though, not far from town. All the kids hung out there in the summer, even Ralph. Part of it filled up with water and they swam there, except Ralph who never did learn how. There was also a fenced off cliff with rocks below. It looked high enough. He thought that would do it.

A few nights after making his decision, he waited until his parents were asleep, then carefully opened up his bedroom window, climbed out and rode his three speed bike out along the deserted road, out of town.

He left his bike near the fence, wiggled through a hole and used his flashlight and the moonlight to make his way to the cliff.

He got dizzy when he looked down. "That should do it," he said out loud. He paced along the cliff, wondering if he should do it or not, listing all the reasons he had for doing it and all the reasons he had for not doing it. To him, it was a no-brainer. He ran toward the edge closed his eyes and jumped.

As he did, three very odd things happened. The first is that his body spun around 360 degrees. The second is that he realized that he was going to miss marshmallows and the third was he stopped falling without hitting the ground.

"What the heck?" he thought. "Am I dead?" His eyes were still closed. "How can I miss the ground? I must be dead."

He opened his eyes. In the dim light, he could see the ground not more than a foot or two below him. He was floating in the air. "This is impossible. This can't happen."

As mentioned, while he may not have been the smartest kid in class, he was not the dumbest, certainly not dumb enough to think that anyone could just jump off a cliff, fall down and never hit the ground. Superman did it but that was television and he knew it was all faked anyway. While he only had a high school knowledge of gravity, he did understand that it was something you just didn't mess with and clearly, he was messing with it or it was messing with him.

Very tentatively, he wiggled his fingers and then his toes and then tried to bring his outstretched hands in toward his body. He found that he could. He wondered if he could actually move and attempted to paddle as if the air was actually water and found that he could.

"Totally amazing! I'm swimming in the air!"

He drifted sideways, forward and backward, up and down as he tried to figure out what actually was going on. The only thing he knew was that he had no real answers. He wasn't even sure that he was actually alive either but it seemed so real, so very real.

At last he tired. He wondered what would happen if he actually reached out and touched something solid. He floated down to within a foot of the ground then very carefully lowered his feet down until they touched the soil now below him. Ever so gently, the air released its grip on him and he put his hands out as his body came in contact with the ground.

"So what the heck happened?" he asked and not surprisingly he did not get an answer. Still holding his flashlight, he walked and climbed and finally made his way carefully back to his bike and rode home, all the while wondering and realizing there was nothing more he could do that night.

Back in his bed, he tossed and turned all night, not getting much sleep until it was time to go back to school the next morning.

There he was, in school, after having had an amazing adventure and there was absolutely no one he could tell, no one at all. Not that he didn't talk to his friends mind you but he knew that no one would ever believe him and that as soon as he opened his mouth and told anyone that he had actually flown, he was certain to be the laughingstock of the entire school. He had been there and done that often enough to know better and did not want it to happen again.

Like many young kids his age in that gentler era, he had an interest in science and the scientific method. That would be his starting point. He decided that he had witnessed a scientific event. Now he needed to duplicate it. But how? Unless he was truly suicidal -- and didn't think he was right then -- he wasn't sure he could risk going back to the quarry and jumping off the cliff again. There was another cliff there that over looked a swimming hole and he had seen other, far braver young men, dive off it and impress everyone with their abilities. Ralph couldn't swim so that was out. He came upon an idea on his way home from school and after dinner, he checked it out.

His parent's house sat on a half acre lot that bordered an abandoned farm. From his bedroom window he could see the old barn that still stood. He and his friends had often played there. It was rickety but it did have one important thing in its favor. There were bales of hay on the floor beneath the old loft. He knew they could cushion his fall because he and his friends had often jumped from the old loft and landed on them. All he had to do was climb up the ladder and jump.

Late that night, he again slipped out of the house and this time he almost ran through the field to the old barn. Using his flashlight, he inspected the bales of hay and even climbed up on them and jumped up and down on them, even falling on them to make sure it was as safe as he could make it and tried to see what it would feel like it if he actually fell onto them. It had been a couple of years since he had last done that on a dare from some of his acquaintances and he remembered that it had hurt but not too bad.

Once satisfied, he climbed up a ladder and onto the narrow walkway above the bales of hay. It was no more than twenty feet up and he wondered if he was high enough but he had no other alternative.

He jumped.

He hit the hay.

He jumped again.

He hit the hay again, and again, and again.

He did not fly and he wondered why.

He tried to look at things scientifically. What was different? The first thing he realized was that he had spun the first time so he tried spinning while falling. He didn't have much luck except that he ended up either on his back or side instead of his front when he landed.

Then he realized that he had been distracted when he had fallen and had also closed his eyes. How to distract himself?

He had been there two hours and was getting very tired and knew he would have a hard time explaining the scratches and bruises he now had. "Just a couple more times," he said and then climbed the ladder once again.

He closed his eyes.

He jumped.

He spun.

He thought of marshmallows.

He floated.

"Yes!" he yelled. He relaxed and drifted inside the old barn for a few minutes, then tried and succeeded in floating upward, back to the rafter that he had jumped from. He reached out and grabbed it and was right back where he had been moments before. He closed his eyes, jumped, spun around, thought of marshmallows again and once more he never made contact with the bales of hay below. He did this a couple of more times just to be sure and then just sat on the bales of hay and realized he was very, very tired. It was time to go home and back to bed.

Over the next few nights, he continued his flying experiments. As usual with him, his efforts were rather clumsy. He kept hitting things in the barn inadvertently but he was flying nonetheless and in a somewhat controlled manner too. He even got to the point where he could actually jump off of a chair and still fly. He found that he could actually move too. It was almost like Superman but he was no where near as fast. Then again, Superman was a comic book and a TV show and he was actually doing it.

The next step was to fly outside the barn and now he was a bit cautious. What if he hit something other than bales of hay? What if he suddenly fell? He ought to have some protection. Yes, that was it. That was what he needed.

It took him several nights of searching to find what he needed. There had been a high school football game that ended late. Some of the equipment was still scattered around the field. He tried on a couple of helmets, finally finding one that fit. There were also a set of kneepads. Those would do nicely. He wasn't sure what else he needed but that was a start.

He thought about flying home but he still had trouble with control so he walked. There were actually a couple of cars out and if anyone had bothered to pay attention to him, they assumed he was just another football player going home, nothing more or less.

Two nights later, he was ready for his big adventure. He went to the barn, put on the helmet and pads and jumped and flew around the barn and then, ever so carefully and slowly, out the door and above the field. He paused and just drifted, floated there in the dark, moonless night.

"Wow, I'm actually doing this. I'm really flying!" he said to no one in particular. "Now, what do I do with this?"

"I know, I can become a UFO!" He laughed so hard he almost fell down and only at the last second did he resume flying. He made some attempts at crude acrobatics and worked at gaining control. It wasn't easy for him, nothing ever was, but much to his credit, he did work at it. Unlike riding a bike, (which took him forever to learn) there was no one who had actually ever done this before so he had nothing to go by. In some ways, he thought it better. His father had almost hounded him, trying to get him to learn to ride the bike and had finally given up. Ralph learned when Ralph was ready and all the nagging and encouraging made no difference at all. As usual, when Ralph did tell his father that he was riding his bike, his father merely said something like, "well good for you." Or was it more like "it's about time,"? Ralph wasn't sure any more.

Like most people of that era, he had heard stories about UFO's. The newspapers and magazines were littered with them. Everyone was sure that aliens had landed on earth. His mother had even mentioned being at Roswell and was certain she had seen one but her story was certainly suspect as that had been during a time she had over indulged in various drugs. Oddly, but not coincidentally, it was also about the time she had become pregnant with Ralph.

Ralph did not believe in UFO's. He was of the mind that while there might be intelligent life on other planets, they certainly wouldn't waste their time with earth.

He spent a couple of days thinking about his next move and how to make himself look like a UFO or whatever one looked like. Lights, he realized, he needed lights but that meant a power source of some kind. One of those big flood lights would do nicely but like many of his ideas, he quickly realized it would be hugely impractical.

He let the whole problem sit for a few days and didn't fly. His late night excursions had meant he was tired during the day at school and that in turn was causing problems he wanted to avoid.

When he resumed flying one Friday night, he decided to see if he could actually carry something. He floated above the bales of hay in the barn and reached down and grasped the wire holding it together. After a little bit of trial and error -- and a couple of falls -- he found he was able to pick it up one handed. As soon as he grasped it, it was as if the bale had no weight at all and it floated with him.

"Truly amazing," he exclaimed. "Now for some lights!"

It took a couple of weeks. He had several late night excursions and a few accidents but it was all part of the learning process for him. Flying at night, he landed behind the fence of the old junkyard on the other side of the railroad tracks that ran through town. There were lots of parts to pick through and he flew them back to the barn one by one and as he did, his confidence grew.