The power of a piece of paper

By Mark Jones Jr.

My youngest child doesn’t fold paper airplanes anymore.

I don’t remember how old he was when he stopped flying them, but I have a vivid memory of a room full of five-year-old kids flinging and chasing the gliders everywhere. There were at least 10 children, and except for the one sitting at the table coloring with crayons, the rest were a blur of little arms and legs, the sounds of shouts and laughter mixed with the sight of smiles and expressions of wide-eyed wonder.

For many of them, the eagerness to go farther or faster usually resulted in wild throws, erratic trajectories, and disappointment, but occasionally the perfect throw would launch the paper creation on a straight and smooth glide across the full length of the large room. When it did, something special happened.

For a child, the transformation of a blank piece of paper into an airworthy glider is almost magic, and the act of handing the aircraft to him instantly creates an explorer, someone brave enough to face uncertainty and fear of failure.

What went through his mind the first time he held the miracle of flight in his hand? I can imagine a million things, some he understood and most he did not. He was probably unaware of the blank graph in his mind or the arc he subconsciously drew after the first flight, an attempt to capture in his memory the path of his airplane. I watched him run across the room and knew that he made a mental note of the distance and the trajectory as he picked it up and hurled it again.

His story is not unusual, and the experience connects him to other aviators throughout history. Mankind has long been interested in flight and attempted to launch machines into the heavens. Many children have explored the intricacies of manufacturing their own aircraft and conducting their own test flights, but few have had the passion to go any farther.

Few have the endurance to pursue the fleeting feelings that the first flight inspired, but for those explorers willing to do whatever it takes to launch their ideas into the world, the experience of flight awaits.

A blank sheet of paper is an invitation.

It is a common starting point for many personal journeys — for artists who sketch, authors who write and, for those brave enough, a way to let their dreams take flight.

One mom, an avid twitter avgeek, understands both perspectives. Stephanie’s young children delight just as much in seeing her fold a paper airplane as they do in watching her walk across the ramp at the start of another flight lesson. She still delights in paper airplanes, and just recently she has pursued the real thing.

She followed her childhood dreams into an aviation career, working around airplanes and airports. Watching airplane movies and reading airplane books complemented visits to airshows, tweets as @airport_girl, and weekend drive-bys of the local airport with her kids.

I imagine that one day she wandered through the living room and spotted a paper airplane, upside down on the floor. As she picked up the flyer, her fingers straightened the wings, while she daydreamed about the look in the eyes of her youngest, unaware that the same sparkle appeared in hers as she stared across the room, the plane between her finger and thumb.

Was that the day she decided to call the local airport and start flight lessons?

Did she know where the journey would take her, deep into textbooks, pages of theory and regulations and techniques, into a flight manual and Part 91 of the 14 CFR, far, far from the wonders she dreamed of? Did she first discover her own wonder in a paper airplane or a paperback copy of Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s “Wind, Sand and Stars?”

Books start the same way, as a blank sheet of paper. They do something similar, providing an invisible force to sustain the trajectory of our hopes and dreams, and in the case of this student pilot-mom avgeek, they provide a way for her to share that love with others who might pick up a book by Richard Bach.

I believe a blank sheet of paper is simultaneously a symbol of hope and a concrete example of the wonders of general aviation. No one ever tells you that you don’t have enough experience to build and fly a paper airplane.

In other words, we all get a chance to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and to launch our ideas into the world.

Where will you land?

Mark Jones Jr. is a husband, father, friend, and pilot, and he loves to write about aviation, flight test safety, and mathematics. He has been flying airplanes since 2001, but he watched his own father fly for many years before that and recently watched his own son learning to fly a Cessna 172. He flew C-17s for the United States Air Force and the HA-420 HondaJet for Honda Aircraft Company. In 2020, he returned to the Cessna 172 on a project with Continental Motors. He continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve.