Ah. So.

Ian was telling me about what he learned in a two-day summer course that he took, and definitely enjoyed, at a local elementary school. The course was called "Science and Mathematics in Art": it turned out that they covered two timeless Japanese crafts - origami and, what sounded like "airigami."

I assumed that "airigami" was an All-American corruption of some genuine Japanese category, so I took a guess: "So what is 'arigami'?"

No - it wasn't "ahhrigami" or "ehhrigami": it was exactly as Ian had said - airigami: it turns out that this is a "real" word, meaning something like "the application of origami to the creation of paper aircraft" - sort of a wacky yuppy term to mean "fancy, origami-enhanced paper-airplane-making."

Of course, he proudly showed me each one - one with an American flag sticker, of sorts; one with a Canadian maple-leaf sticker, and had me stand admiringly on the stairway, watching like so many tourists at the edge of Niagara Falls, as he launched each one from the top of the stairs and commented on the comparative performance of each one.

(July, 2011)