Set the scene (chestnut ridge park): one of those beautiful summer weekdays… well, evening rather. The light shifts markedly, signaling impending culmination that only a dimming 7 O’ the clock PM can register. It’s one of those days that you can taste. The bees are buzzing, the birds are twittering/twuttering. It’s worth writing home about.
ACT1:
Narrator: we find our hero reclined at the crest of the hill, a hill graced thousands of times with cheap plastic sleds, winter booties, and steel lined racers. However, those days are just a distant memory now. The hill knows only calm. Overlooking the pines, the city plastered hazily on the fading blue canvas, it really is quite breathtaking.
Silence is broken. Not shattered abruptly, but slowly overwhelmed. As a freight train, it’s a broken note on the breeze. Then, it becomes the hint of something powerful… to a dull roar… to thunder…
to screams.
what was a mere disturbance becomes a head swiveling reality. A grim reality. The silence has given way to cub scouts. Figuratively: thousands and thousands of cub scouts. Literally: perhaps 20 (though a force to be reckoned with to be sure). Picture flies on shit. Picture ants about dropped ice cream treat. Picture bees defending the hive. But animate the shit, the treat, the hive. Make them into a scout master…
(our hero ponders…)
Perhaps the scoutmaster isn’t the hive. Perhaps he holds the hive in his hands. From a distance, just some streaks of color. As the seething mass of noise and chaos approaches him, streaks and blurs become crisp. Lines become clear where none appeared before, combining and intersecting to form nothing as unmistakable as a remote controlled airplane. The wings were of the brightest glossiest green. The body reflected all of the frequencies of the natural spectrum, emanating the brightest white imaginable. Clearly, this plane had never seen the skies; judging by the clamor, this was to be the virgin flight.
Perhaps tedious hours had been spent by cub scout troop 666 building this, perhaps countless pennies had been saved. Whatever the reason… this was a special plane.
ACT2:
The troop approaches the crest of the hill: an ideal launching spot, for nothing but blue skies and butterflies remain ahead. Silence falls on the troop. There has apparently been some delegation beforehand as to who shall perform piloting and launching duties, because the plane is not fought over, rather, merely handed to a select scout. The same is done with the remote control module. Judging by the serenity of the otherwise chaotic troop, it is clear that exalted scoutmaster has asserted that, “indeed, everyone shall get a turn”.
An impromptu, brief, train session is imparted to our little scouts.
ACT3:
The silent troop somehow manages to increase the level of silence. It is as if the entire troop has somehow summoned an audible vacuum, seemingly silencing the entire immediate area.
A high speed buzz leaps through the air, smashing the stillness that the hypothetical “sound vacuum” has created. A reciprocating engine screams out its high pitched war cry. The flight is about to begin. The countdown begins. The scout master begins at 5. By 3, he controls half of the scouts voices, by 1, nearly all of them. Certainly, all of the voices are present for the resounding cry of “GO!”
The cocked arm rockets forward - sending the plane out into space.
There are moments in life where time apparently stops. Time seems to slow down to a crawl so indiscernible that it feels like one could age a thousand years in what ultimately occupies a only the briefest instant. It was Einstein who theorized that as body approaches the speed of light, time will slow down to the point of immeasurability. The powerful little arm that launched the plane may not have made it to the requisite 299,792,458 m/s, represented by “c” in the well known equation of relativity, but it must have been close, because time nearly stopped. It was a snapshot of the calm before the storm. In this frozen instant, after leaving the child’s hand, the plane is airborne. It is also, however, horribly askew. The image depicts the last moments of smiling faces, laughter… joy.
Time accelerates back to reality. Perhaps too quickly… Mayhap, time is dead on, but due to the comically short distance the plane covers and the torrential speed with which it tears into the earth time passes in an instant.
The plane is obliterated. Almost unrecognizable. This is devastation. This is the aeronautical equivalent of Hiroshima… of Nagasaki. Shattered struts and torn canvas rest limply on the ground not more than a few yards away, a distance that even the Wright Brothers would scoff at.
As the pendulum swings, the almost explosive elation of the troop slides from the highest peak of the emotional sine-wave down the steep steep slope, past amicable, past discontentment, straight into the depths of despair. It can be seen in all faces (though some fight off tears better than others). The scoutmaster approaches the ruined masterpiece and carefully cradles it in his arms. He directs the troop back to the parking lot with a motion of his head. The sound of tears and runny noses following him wordlessly, as they make their way out of the hero’s life and into his memory…
End.