#1225 Kite Kids

Public art is always a problem. People can’t help but think it represents how a community sees itself. So it’s often fairly neutral and bland. You probably wouldn’t have, say, an 12-foot bar of soap with hairs stuck to it rendered in bronze.
The Olympia City Council once erected a sculpture in a waterside park featuring seven oars stuck in the ground. One wag pointed out it seemed to represent that the Council didn’t have all its oars in the water.
Another idea gone to pot.
The City of Lacey took a less controversial route. They chose to have sculptures of children flying kites adorning two of the major entrances to the city. The public christened one child, “kite girl” and the other, “kite boy.”
Name creativity was apparently soaring like a kite as well.
So my question is, there are a lot more entrances to the city. Will children engaged in other pursuits adorn them as well? “Paddle-ball boy” perhaps, or “jump-rope girl”?
And then I got real. When was the last time you saw a kid flying a kite?
If we were realistically to depict today’s kids, it would look like this: Gender would be hard to determine, as a hoodie would be obscuring his or her face. The kid would be hunched over, because he/she was wearing a fifty-pound backpack, due to school locker issues.
But also because the kid would be intently gazing with glazed eyes at a handheld electronic device. Earbuds in ears, the child would have its thumbs poised to busily engage in either texting or iPod twiddling.
Perfect! “Text boy” and “iPod girl.”
If I suggest this to the city, do you think they’ll tell me to go fly a kite?
America, ya gotta love it.