The other day I was sitting in Central Park in a section of the park known as Sheep's Meadow. It's a part of the park that's pretty quiet and people are just laying around with a few frisbee tossers scattered about. While I was there, two guys and a little kid showed up with a kite. Of course, they set up right next to me, so now I have to sit up and pay attention to the seven year old with the kite. I have a vision of this kite crashing through my eyeball.

I'm pretty sure they were gay and speaking Italian, except for the little kid who spoke in both Italian and English and did not yet have a sexual preference. One of the guys, who we will call Tony, had a shirt on that said somthing to the effect of "God made weed and God made booze. Figure it out!" Figure out how God made these things? I don't get it. Seeing this gave me an idea for a sitcom called, "My Two Gay Italian Dads Who Like to Get High and Fly Kites." Regardless, they began taking the kite out of the package, so right there, I know that I'm going to get a kite in the head, because I'm assuming that they have never flown a kite before and this was an impulse buy. You know what they say about Italians -- they like pasta and can't fly kites for shit. "Hey-a! Let's-a go and-a fly an American kite-a in the Park-a de Central! We'll-a have a good time-a!"

The other dad (the one without the philosphical t-shirt), who we will call Tony, starts running with the kite through the park and is doing a fine job of keeping it up. The kid, who we'll call Tony Jr., takes over for him. Now the rest of the park knows they have to keep an eye out because he's not stationary, and now everyone's a target. So Tony Jr. is charging through the park running over people who are laying out, yelling, "Heads up! Heads up!" Meanwhile, High Tony is taking pictures of all this.

There is hardly a breeze so the only thing keeping up the kite is the fact that Tony Jr. is running. And being a little kid that hangs out with two high dads all the time, he's kind of lazy. So he stops frequently and the kite comes crashing down every time. Luckily so far, no one has been hit.

Now, there is a guy sitting in the middle of the park reading a book. He's by himself and is probably the Whitest and Nerdiest Person in the Park. If it weren't for him, I think I would have been the one with that title. There is probably a twenty foot radius around him of emptiness, so being that there is a lot of free space to run, Tony Jr. comes scurrying by him and the kite comes soaring down and right into the guy. The guy might have been the only one not watching the kid, instead reading his book, not paying attention and took the kite square in the face. It was pretty comical, so the entire park starts laughing. Not only does the guy have to deal with the kite hitting him and the string and the ribbons hanging from the kite that get tangled up in him, now there's the humilation factor.

I felt bad for the guy (at the same time so glad it wasn't me), but he played it off pretty well. He really can't get too mad at a cute little kid, especially when he's got these two mysterious gay high Italian dads. They are unpredictable. Tony Jr. apologizes while Tony and Tony are laughing with the crowd, rather than apologizing. You can't blame them. They're high. At that moment, I kind of wished I was high because I would have found it a lot funnier, and I probably would have been eating Pringles.

The saddest part about it was the fact that it hit this guy. It could have hit any other person in the park, and it wouldn't have been as amusing. If it hit a group of guys, they'd all get a kick out of it, if it hit a girl, everyone would go running to her to make sure she was OK. I imagined that this kid moved to New York about three weeks ago. He is 22 and from a suburb of Milwaukee, just graduated from the University of Wisconsin, and came to New York with lots of big ideas and aspirations to be a poet or a novelist. He had those black chunky glasses on that you are issued at certain coffee houses and was probably reading Hemingway. His hair was that little curly mini-fro. So of all the people in the park, the potential for hilarity was highest on this dude. This was probably the first nice day since he's been here so he thought he'd go get some sun in Central Park and do some reading.

For that guy (at least in my imagination), his time in New York so far consisted of three weeks of rain, and the one time he ventured outside where he got whaled in the head by a kid with a kite and had a couple of hundred people in Central Park laugh at him. It must have felt like a movie where everything becomes slow motion and everyone is pointing and laughing.

You know what they say about this city, it'll chew you up and spit you out, and eventually, one day, you'll get clobbered by a kite being carried by a kid who has two gay Italian dads that are high. It's a tough city man. Tough city.