It was made of broomsticks and rags
and old, old wires, but—it flew!
YES, it flew! Only for a
moment, that is so, but it flew!! Flying Thing #1 did fly and young Tommy
Malloy was ecstatic. It fell and
crashed to the ground and broke into a hundred pieces; but that didn’t matter,
because it HAD flown, and that meant that the possibility had become an actuality
even if it was only for a moment.
Tommy danced about the wreckage of his Flying Thing #1. which was in
pieces and scattered about in the field.
Tommy
then set out to build Flying Thing #2.
He poured a great deal of time, money and enthusiasm into this project.
At night he dreamed of this marvelous machine in flight—and he saw himself in
all the papers: “Tommy Malloy creates Flying Thing!”
When
he finished it, he looked at it and thought it was a thing of great
beauty. He started it up. It wobbled and ran about the field. It sputtered and strained and popped,
but it wouldn’t take to the air.
He adjusted a few things, refueled it, primed it, turned it toward the
wind and started it up again; and again it wobbled and sputtered and strained
and popped. Then after many tries,
Flying Thing #2 hissed, screamed, choked and died never having, left the
ground.
Did
I mention that Tommy was a very religious person? When he was crestfallen for the failure of Flying Thing #2,
he blamed himself for his failure—Not that he was wrong to build Flying Things,
no, NO; he felt certain that God had given him a great gift to build such
marvelous contraptions as the world had not seen! No, not that, his error was his arrogance, ego and pride—his
heart was not right, he decided, and that led him to dismantle Flying Thing #2
because, as he said to himself over and over again, “God has shut me down! And
there is nothing I can do about it.”
He believed that he would have to purify his heart, and when his heart
was right, God would call him, in the right time and place, to build Flying
Things.
And
so Tommy became even more religious and spent his life trying to purify his
heart so that when God called him to build his Flying Things, he would do so
successfully and with purity of heart!
He married dutifully, but lovelessly, raised his children according to
the will of God, worked hard at a job that he didn’t care for, with a boss that
over-tasked him and paid him enough to keep him barely above poverty—for which
he gave thanks to God in all things.
And he continued to spend years of devotion to God and to his church.
Time passed by and Tommy was getting
older and older. Once in a while
he thought about his Flying Things—even toyed with an idea for building Flying
Thing #3—a little less weight here, lighter materials there, a different
angle--but no, he would think, God had shut him down for his sinful pride and
his many imperfections.
In time, Tommy died never having
built his Flying Things. He came
before Almighty God. It wasn’t
quite like he imagined. God was in
a bar and looked like he would be more comfortable among bikers than
preachers. He was smoking a cigar
and drinking shots of bourbon. The
piano player was playing “Stairway to Heaven” on a honky-tonk piano in the
background while God poured a shot of bourbon into to Tommy’s glass. Tommy, being religious, refused to
drink, so God, being God and all, gave it to him straight: “Tommy,” he said, scratching his
whiskers, “I gave you a gift! Son,
you could’ve built the most amazing flying things to the joy of everyone, IF
ONLY YOU HADN’T BEEN SO DAMN RELIGIUOS!!!
