The Paper Plane

 

Recently my friend Chris suggested something radical: the Paper Plane. That got me thinking. There hasn’t been a hard-hitting piece on the paper plane in a long, long time. Maybe ever. Probably because any would-be writer fears his piece de resistance/fate would end up sailing through the sky. But I do not suffer from aerophobia, and I am quite comfortable with my writing efforts ending up in all kinds of places, including, sometimes, even the air.

To understand the paper plane, we must first understand paper. Paper is a thing we write on. Good. Got it. Next, what is a plane? A plane is a thing that defies gravity, I think, using the power of magic. But back to paper. A brief history of paper is in order.

The first paper was a cave wall. The cave wall was big improvement over the non-existence of paper, but it still had miles to go. Alas, not in the air. Thus, the caveman’s contribution to the paper plane was negligible.

Next paper evolved from cave wall to clay tablet. The Sumerians made a clay tablet to write down numbers. Nobody knew what these numbers were for but figured they might come in handy later. Archeologists agreed so scribes wrote down numbers – on clay tablets! As a flying object, the clay tablet was a huge leap forward from the cave. On the other hand, a clay tablet tumbling end over end is nothing to write home about – on either cave or tablet. However, one day a dismissive scribe held it sideways and gave it a flick, like a disc (or, as many today know by the brand, a frisbee) and that thing sailed! But since the clay tablet was more clay than paper, it was technically not a paper plane.

Thus, paper evolved again into parchment. Parchment, it turns out, is just a fancy name for a dead animal skin. Early Man tried writing on live animal skin but that was deemed a failure by all involved. Dead animal skins worked out better for everyone except the deceased. Parchment is superior to a clay tablet in that it was lighter, and you could roll it up. On the other hand, parchment was still a terrible thing to fold. Hence, early man learned a paper plane made of parchment could sail farther than a cave but not as far as a clay tablet. Which is why man invented…

Papyrus. Papyrus was the most papery of all the papers so far. Experts called papyrus the paperiest. Papyrus rolled-up like parchment in a scroll, if you had one handy. But unlike its predecessors, papyrus was also a thing you could fold. Oh, the possibilities. A scribe, bored with the task at hand, could always doodle. Archeologist date doodles all the way back to the cave wall. Some even believe the only thing on cave walls are doodles. A single aside about doodles: the most common doodles were stick-figure renderings of your sworn enemy in ridiculous and compromising situations. (A second aside about doodles: Only millennia later would the word “doodle” be appropriated by the canine industry and turned into monstrosities like labradoodle, goldendoodle, and sheepadoodle.) But back to the fold… Finally, a scribe, bored with scribing and doodling, could fold his efforts neatly. It was but a small jump from the fold to a paper plane. But it took a genius to combine the doodle and the fold, working with gravity, thrust, lift, drag, and, of course, magic to produce the first flying machine. Luckily, the world gave us Leonardo Da Vinci.

Hobbyists, formerly known as scribes, intent on not writing anything more on the page, took the paper plane up to a new, well, plane. Many different models were introduced. From The Dart to The Sea Glider to The Loop de Loop, there were soon enough available models that a scribe could procrastinate almost indefinitely.

At the end of my historical journey, I revisited the note from my friend Chris, actually opening his email this time, and discovered he was not suggesting a paper plane, the flying object. Chris recommended a Paper Plane, the cocktail: 1 ½ oz. amaro; 1 ½ oz of Aperol; 1 ½ oz of Bourbon; 1 ½ oz of strained lemon juice (shake; strain). Some journalists will go to the frontlines of a warzone to bring home the story. Others halfheartedly/eventually open emails and use the contents within to assemble new cocktails. I attempted the latter feat. A Paper Plane, the cocktail, is perfectly balanced, not-too-sweet, a-hint-of-sour, kissed-by bitter, and imbued with length. This alchemy of spirits lifted my spirits. I believe Da Vinci would have approved.