There was a scary moment in Taiwan this weekend when a toddler was lifted 30 feet into the air by one of the kites at the Hsinchu City International Kite Festival. 

According to Focus Taiwan, the 3-year-old girl suffered abrasions to her face and neck, but was otherwise unharmed.

Winds in the community located about 50 miles southwest of Taipei reached 7 on the Beaufort Scale, which is listed as “near gale” and can include winds of up to 38 mph, the news site reported.

Full story here.

Warning: The video’s a little freaky- but the girl was remarkably okay.

I’ll say this right off the bat, I’m no kite expert, haven’t flown one in years. I’ve got nothing against kites, it just always seemed like more work than I was expecting. We never got the field and just ‘flew the kite’. No. There was always way more running than I expected. Maybe I was just a bad kite flyer. That’s certainly plausible.

Regardless, if I were to look past my lack of expertise, I’d advise that maybe it’s not the wisest idea to plan your kite festival fo ra day where wind can transport a three year old to another dimension. I have no idea how these festivals go, but it really seemed like there were any number of people that could have just been whipped off into Oz. 

I don’t want to put all of the blame on the festival organizers. Some of this weight certainly falls on the people just standing around. While one could argue that flying one kite,  let alone a thousand, in a tornado isn’t a good idea, it also doesn’t help that the kite in question was shaped like a giant parachute, or that it was tied around a small child. What’s the guy in the yellow vest doing? Isn’t this your entire job? You’re not there to judge the competition, or to make sure the kite flies up to expectation. I’m pretty sure you’re just there to make sure we’re not firing off children like mortar rounds. If you ‘re that guy you have to be on your game, the kite is too big to sleep on the job. You could have marketed this thing as a way to investigate the ozone. Forget the office chair taped to 6 dozen balloons, hook up this kite on a windy day and weigh less than fifty pounds! The thing is giant. IT’s too big. They shouldn’t even allow kids at this thing! You could have fit spiked that thing to the ground, called it a tent, and fit 4 of her in there. What happened to the little quadrilateral kite with the ribbons on it? Those were great, and nobody flying them got caught in the convection cycle!

This has me thinking though… maybe this WAS the best day to have the festival. Kites need wind, so it’s not too far out of the question that some folks were like, “this wind could blow away a small child, it’s perfect!” While that seems foolish, I’d just as quickly be writing a blog about this windless kite fair being the fyre festival of 2020 (except of course, for the fact that the title for 2020 Fyre Festival already belongs exclusively to all three branches of the American government). Yellow vest guy, you had one job.