Flying A Kite And Failing Miserably -- I May Have To Stick To Cheap Parlor Tricks

My four year-old daughter thinks I can do just about anything. She's amazed when I juggle round fruit with my hands, or a soccer ball with my feet (not at the same time), or drill a screw into the wall to hang a picture.

My one year-old son can't laugh hard enough when I give him a high toss in the air or swing him upside down.

My wife thinks I do okay as well and enjoys the fact that I handle 95% of the household cooking (breakfast and dinner).

There's definitely no singing "Cats in the Cradle" in my house.

So as a father figure, I felt like I was really holding my own. At least until we bought my daughter a kite and took it up to Klutho Park yesterday.

The conditions were more than ripe. The wind was blowing briskly and my nauseating hangover had finally subsided.

I envisioned a Norman Rockwell scene -- the quintissential cross-generational moment where child and adult become one, the traumas of the day lay forgotten and the laundry piling on the bed folds itself.

What could go wrong?

Everything.

In a word (or two), I apparently don't know how to fly a kite.

Sure, the wind was good, the kite assembled correctly and the string properly clipped. So why was Zephyrus or the other Anemois mocking me in front of my children, my wife, and the ten guys playing baseball a few yards away? Newton's Laws were supposed to be inapplicable in this situation.

Thankfully, my wife was kind enough to forego the metaphorical humor and didn't once shout out, "That's not the only thing you have trouble keeping up!"

Actually, I'm not so vain that I can't accept my own failures. I don't truly believe that there is some emasculating pixie playing tricks on me. I can accept that fact that I just don't know how to fly a kite. Not yet.

So, while my daughter recovers from yesterday's disaster, and before her psychiatrist clears her to return to the park with me, I intend to undergo secret kite flying lessons. I may even form a support network for other fathers as inept as me.

I think in the end I will be able to overcome this failure and win back my family's respect. If not, then I'll just have to go back to juggling fruit, baking chicken and forever cursing the day that the Chinese invented kite flying 2500 years ago.