Flying

12-11-03

At one point in our lives every person dreams of being able to fly. Well, what if the entire human race really could fly? This puzzling question is something we can only contemplate. Like the Wright Brothers we each hold a desire to be airborne. Now, human evolution has taken a drastic turn.

The latest news headline was one of a human child born with the ability to grow wings. Most consider the wings a defect, a mutation, or some genetic oddity that will never happen again. Some even disbelieve it really did happen. Our species has learned how to lose faith in things we cannot see. In our world "seeing is believing", but doctors began disbelieving what they saw. The new generation all had the same signs as the first child. The pediatricians monitoring the growth of these children freaked out when their patients began sprouting wings. It was so incredulous to some parents that they paid hundreds to thousands of dollars to get the wings removed so their children would be "normal". Society reacted to this miracle as if it were a deadly plague that broke out and was going to destroy us all.

My reaction was only that I wish I had wings. I found someone who could grant that wish and my wings slowly and painfully started to grow from my shoulder blades where I rubbed the creamy potion I was given. The radical scientist was delighted in the promising results because he had been working on this project for a long time. Once they had fully grown in, I tried to fly. It was not nearly as easy as I had hoped. When I dreamt of flying it was effortless, like floating on a cloud. In reality it was very much like falling but I never made impact with the ground. Instead it was more of a gliding stop when my feet touched. I was ecstatic about the change. I quickly taught myself to fly. I felt so much sympathy for the children who were not accepted by their own parents because they had wings, that I decided to lead a band of runaways. I called them my little angels and taught them how to fly. Flying is such a beautiful thing, and we have all begun to appreciate it. Moving swiftly through the wide-open air, side by side with the birds, is an invigorating feeling. It all seems so magical, but the people below have turned it into something evil. They believe the wings are the work of the devil, and have shot many of us down. As difficult as it was for that first generation of winged children, it becomes gradually more and more easily accepted. Though I won’t live to see it carried out to the fullest, I can see it happening: the children becoming adults and protecting the younger generations. They are the only future. Once the land bound people die-off from old age our kind will take over. Automobiles will become a thing of the past. I can already see it. Our people will continue retaining human characteristics: they’ll begin to accept flying as a god given right. No one will marvel at the miracle anymore. Both the land and the skies will be overtaken by the human race. The lack of appreciation will cause the majority to single out any school age child born with deformed, missing, or malformed wings. A baby born with no place for wings to grow would become an outcast, just as those first children with wings were. All of the magical perceptions we associate with flying will diminish. Instead of flying being the myth, the myth will be that all humans once had to walk their entire lives because they had no wings.