Airplane Tetherball

My sister, Alfred, and I were very creative with the games we’d play growing up.  Often, we’d make our own version of some toy we wished we had or that our school or church had.  My post about our attempts to bungee jump is one example.  We even made our own tetherball, sort of.

Our shared bedroom had a little alcove in it with a lower-than-average ceiling.  - The alcove I wrote about in Don’t Shoot, I’m Not a Real Princess! – The ceiling was low enough that if I stood on my bed in the alcove, I could touch the ceiling.  The ceiling had a light fixture on it.  A round fixture with a round, bulbous frosted glass cover.  The frosted glass cover was held into the metal fixture by 3 screws.  The screws were evenly placed around the fixture and held the frosted glass cover in place by the pressure the bottom of the screw placed on the cover’s rim.  This meant the screws were not screwed in tight such that there was space between the screw head and the fixture rim.  This is relevant, just wait.

Alfred had a toy airplane.  A plastic, Fisher Price airplane that had little round-hole seats in it for passengers and a pilot.  The plane was rather large, probably about a foot long and a foot in wingspan.  It had wheels and coming off the nose was a long yellow plastic cord so that the plane could be pulled along.

For some reason, we decided this large, heavy, plastic airplane would make a great tetherball.  So we took that yellow pull-cord and tied it to one of the screws on the light fixture.  The cord fit perfectly in that little space between the screw head and the fixture rim.

Then, Alfred stood and I kneeled on my bed and we batted the plane back and forth at each other, ducking to dodge hard swings and smacking it back at the other person.  It was all great fun.

It was all great fun until the one time we were playing with it and the round, bulbous frosted glass fixture broke.  Broken frosted glass all over my bed.  Pooey.  The airplane didn’t hit the glass.   We didn’t really know why it broke.  Even looking back, I’m not sure.  Perhaps the screw with the plane on it was twisted just enough to put too much pressure on the cover’s rim, maybe it was tweaked at an angle that pierced the glass and caused it to shatter, maybe the screw came loose and the cover fell out and hit something on the way down.

I also don’t remember getting in trouble, but I’m sure we must have.  We certainly didn’t play airplane tetherball again.