Subject: me being an idiot. Witness: my son. (But you’ll soon know about it, too). Setting: a crowd in a forest preserve watching a ranger display a Red-tailed Hawk on a gloved hand and feed it a mouse.

But that bloody chomp was to be the climax. Before that, we had to endure a lecture about Red-tails. This one couldn’t fly but was healthy enough to be an exhibit. A hobbled hawk is not a happy sight. And I hadn’t patience for the monologue; there wasn’t much I didn’t know about hawks.

I wandered back to my car for a bag of cookies. Big chocolate chip cookies. I wanted one, and I knew my kid would, too. I returned to the group. Where was my son? I stood on a wood-rail fence to see better. There he was.

People below me… then the ranger…and on the other side, more people, with my son in back. I caught his eye and gestured with a cookie. Then I flung it his way. I was confident that he understood I’d left the boring lecture, got cookies, and was giving him one.

Time out: If you think this is about how the hawk sees my cookie and makes a move to get it, sorry. Didn’t happen. This hawk only had eyes for mouse.

What did happen: I spun the big cookie toward my kid. Used a backhand style, giving it lift, like a Frisbee. My kid’s good at grabbing Frisbees. What could go wrong? Well, if a spinning disk tilts, it might bank and miss its target.

This is what happened to our cookie. It arched unseen over the crowd, and landed gently on the head of a man standing next to my son.

The guy was wearing one of those flat caps, the kind that have no real brim. Its top was flat as an aircraft carrier, and our cookie settled there. The guy didn’t feel it. Nobody noticed. Just me. And my son, who was wide-eyed.

Later he explained that he had no idea I was aiming for him, but assumed that, being bored, I had obtained cookies, located a bird watcher with a flat cap, and tossed one onto his head.

He told me he thought this was pretty damn funny, and he was glad I did it. I knew it had been unintentional, and I was an idiot. But if it gave him some amusement, well, that’s what dads are for.

Footnote: This really happened.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 10:09 pm and is filed under "Daily Sightings" A Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.