Racing paper

Job 9:26 They skim past like boats of papyrus, like eagles swooping down on their prey.

I heard this verse the other day, as I was doing by daily bible listening, the modern way slackers like me read through the Bible. He's using this verse to talk about how fast days are going by. That was not the image in my mind. In my mind, I saw the boy king Tut, as he has been portrayed on the Discovery channel, knocking a scribe out of the way to get to his freshly pounded paper, which he promptly folds into the shape of a boat, a rough beige boat. Then with a flair of gold and blue he launches the new paper craft into the muddy Nile river and watches it speed away. This is not what is being described in Job, who would have known of the actual light boats made of thick rods of papyrus, but I just couldn't shake it.

The bell in the hallway rang, letting us know it was time for recess. I carefully tore a couple sheets of paper from the notebook, grabbed a plastic tape dispenser and headed outside. I had a plan.

I walked out into the sunlight behind Smith Elementary. I could see from just down the step, my destination. The play yard of my school was divided into two. The portion nearest the school started with pavement and basketball hoops and became a grass field with wood and rubber playground equipment. The other portion of the yard was wooded with trails and temporary forts. Between them, though, was a creek, filled with crayfish and water walking bugs, which flowed from the right under the small bridge to the woods and finally turning into a cement culvert, carefully fenced, which diverted it. The start of this creek was where I was headed.

Before I made it to the launch zone, I need to find some place to build. I selected a giant tire, half buried beneath the ground. I sat the tape on the ground and began to fold the first sheet of paper on the marred black tread of the tire. In just a moment, Shawn joined me. He asked what I was doing, so I told him and handed him the other sheet of paper. Together we folded boats, as best as we could. I told him we needed to add a little weight to the bottom, or it would fall over. We taped small, pencil sized sticks to the bottom ridge of our boats. They seemed clunky on the thin vessels, but served the purpose.

We moved to the place where the creek came under the fence, but we would have to throw them quite a ways to get them into the water. This wouldn't do. So we walked looking for the first opportunity to get close to the water. Just a few steps away for the fence, a small sandy bank gave us just the access we needed. With a short countdown, we placed our little boats as close to each other as we could in the current of water. Even before we stood, they began to race away from us.

We stood and ran downsteam trying to get ahead of them, so we could see them coming from a distance, then watch them race by us. We stared with a blend of wonder and trying to determine a winner. They were so close it was hard to tell who would win. We ran and watched, and ran and watched and ran to the final spot. To be honest I don't know who won the race, but I remember the feeling of watching the boat in the stream, how it seemed to have a life of its own, how it sped by. I remember kneeling down by the water on the last spot we could see them, before they would be out of the playground and how the they moved beyond where we could reach, to the other side of the creek. Our grasping hands couldn't reach. Too late I stepped into the water to get mine. It was gone. Taking the rest of the journey, perhaps all the way to Egypt, without me.