Well, if all of you promise to never tell anyone in Detroit, I'll tell you my story of how I virtually shut down the city with some kite string:
It was a blustery spring day. I had a new kite and was enjoying flying it at the school yard. The conditions were perfect and I wanted to fly even higher than my one ball of string would allow. So I went home and asked my mom for more string. She gave me a roll of "Christmas String." It was regular string with a strip of aluminum foil wrapped around it to make it prettier.
Out I went. I ran my kite as high as it would go with the regular string, then tied on the Christmas String. Up it went even higher. I was having a great time.
Then the wind started to die down. And the kite started to come down. Not wanting to give up, I kept trying to regain altitude... to no avail. So down came the kite.
The trouble came when the Christmas String made contact with the powerlines over the playground. It drapped from one to another and then "Bang!!!" With a loud cracking sound and a big ball of fire, the power lines came crashing down. They danced around like an out-of-control fire hose, shooting sparks instead of water.
I stood there all amazed. I threw the string down on the ground (probably saved my life) and backed into a corner of the playground. In what seemed like moments, sirens started to scream. Police and fire trucks came roaring to the scene. I watched in horror, sure that I would be arrested and executed by the next day. But no one seemed to notice the frightened little boy standing in the corner... watching.
Interestingly, every spring, around the time the kites began to fly, our teachers would warn us all about the evil little boy who killed power to the city by flying his kite with Christmas String. I never confessed (until now) but was sure that everyone knew I was guilty.
Dad (Darwin Winner)
