Quote:
Originally Posted by TheModMaster8
Last year a high ranking official from the United States Air Force complimented this activity and even when so far out to take the ones on the stage with him to remember FIRST by. I don't know about you but That man obviously saw something you all did not.
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What he saw was a well-constructed and well-thrown paper airplane that reached the area beside the stage. What he did not see from that vantage point was the uncounted hundreds of airplane-shaped wads of paper, ball-shaped wads of paper, and pieces of just plain unfolded paper that hit people in the head.
This year I didn't see anyone dumping piles of unfolded paper over the railings, and I didn't see anyone intentionally throwing their airplanes straight up so they'd have more velocity when they landed on the people nearby. But I saw someone a few rows away from me repeatedly fold the same flawed shape and throw it in the same awkward side-armed way a dozen or more times, getting the same three-foot-forward-then-nosedive result every time. I think he only stopped when he ran out of pages in his program to rip out. I got hit in the back of the neck three times with pointy paper darts by kids of approximately FLL age sitting behind me before I turned around and told them to stop throwing trash at me. I watched people intentionally trying to land paper airplanes on top of a couple of mascots before the parade.
Paper airplanes are fun to throw. They are fun to watch if they are made well and thrown well. But they are distracting and disrespectful when thrown during speeches or robot matches, regardless of quality. And they are just plain dangerous, whether due to hitting people or by causing a slip hazard.