Chris and I chose to walk to
Vanier Park to fly
kites, feet chosen partially because it was a lovely day out and partially because we were both tickled by the prospects available at a highly-publicised
garage sale almost precisely midway between us and the park, as the crow flies.
Crows don't build roads to accomodate hills. Mere blocks away from the potential phat loot, we were sucked into a space/time spiralling vortex of such eldrich and cyclopean geometry that we walked down the same street and up its alley three times before realising that we were going in, if not circles, then definitely triangles.
Somehow we broke free of its irresistable attraction and, wearied, entered the plot of backyard commerce. Records, clothing, household appliances. Yawn. Then we saw it - and I don't know which one of us laid eyes on it first, but I managed to get my grubby paws on it before him; a somewhat mangy tuft of blue fur with a grey knight's helmet and red cape. I exchanged a fistful of coins for its righteous rightful ownership, and morale-bolstered by our new possession we proceeded to the park.
...
Under Newtonian physics there are only so many ways to fly a kite, and we had exhausted almost all of them by the time the idea was hatched. Well, laid. Super Grover wants to fly. We can help him do so. I was somewhat wary of this scheme, but agreed to it provided I was not to be responsible for arranging, executing or dealing with possible ramifications of the precise mechanics of the act.
The mechanics, as it turned out, involved lots of small knots.
A small patch of blue aloft against a larger field of blue - inspiring evidence of our whimsy-realising skills, but now what? Proof of its doing done, we could now move on to greater and sillier things once we land this sucker and disassemble it. Vanier Park, along with its strong winds and the giant paperclip, features a number of medium-sized stagnant ponds, the largest of which features two ~15-feet trees opposing each other as reflections. My childhood affinity with Charlie Brown should have warned me of the dangers of kite-eating trees but somehow, blissful in the glow of accomplishment, I was blind to this danger until the string was caught in the near tree... which was no big problem in itself until the wind cut down and the kite descended neatly catching itself in the opposing tree...
with Super Grover dangling almost precisely between the two, suspended precariously over the furthest and deepest part of the murky pond.
We could hardly have arranged it so neatly if we'd intended to do so in the first place. The trees were slender enough to make climbing them impossible, but sturdy enough to render shaking an ineffective loosening-measure. Too tall to reach even on each others' shoulders, our party split in search of improvised reaching tools from the nearby shore. Returning with sundry sticks, wands and batons, we ascertained that we could perhaps snag the string with our new props but not without incurring the risk of Super Grover being swallowed up forever in the fetid mire, fished out perhaps by the remaining string but not before being drug through a century's worth of goose droppings at the bottom of the pool, a fate perhaps worse than irretrievability.
Hasty calculations shew that upon snapping a suspending string, Grover would swing down towards the nearest shore but wouldn't quite make it - but could perhaps be salvaged if one of us were foolish enough to wade in up to our knees and reach out to catch his flying furry pendulousness. Protective over my new property, I was foolish enough.
schlup, schlup. schlup, schlup. schlup, schlup. schlup, schlup.
Ew.
"Ready?"
"Ready! Ready?"
"Ready."
Elevated by another, the string-striker severed the cord with a thwack of his stick. Tension slackened, the kite dropped out of the far tree - but I was unaware of this, every nerve keyed to stretch out and seize the encroaching Muppet in mid-flight. And it came, screaming at me. I reached, I grasped, I snatched - for naught; I could not reach it as it swung down, defying our calculations and coming to a gentle landing on a small patch of grass a few feet away from the water's edge.
@#$%!
No one sat next to the bilgey-smelling man cradling the blue mass protectively on the bus ride home.
...
Super Grover had a few other merry adventures and was immortalised on film at the ConcreteMeet as a swinging counterbalance to the camcorder on the other end of the skipping rope, both hung in motion on a chandelier at Benny's the night yam and I went crazy and were banned from the premises.
Ultimately I installed him at a house I wanted excuses to visit so I could stop in and check on the people under the pretense of visiting the Muppet. I never did, but every time I passed by he was in mid-flight in the kitchen window, suspended over a much-less-ominous body of water. One sudden day, the house was unoccupied. I can only hope that somewhere someone is making as good use of him as I did.