> I have wondered a bit about why a sheet of typing paper folded into a paper airplane had as much appeal as it did when I was young. I think the kind of pover

> I have wondered a bit about why a sheet of typing paper folded into a paper airplane had as much appeal as it did when I was young. I think the kind of poverty of youth (my single, working-mom, a secretary, sneaking home the paper for me) forced a kind of creativity on me. We all made do with what was around the house. This may be presumptuous of me because I obviously don't know your head, but I think you've missed the mark here, even though you know the secret when hoping you've passed the magic on to your kids. Exploration. The paper airplane isn't exciting because you have to make do, it's exciting because it's an avenue for exploration. How can I make it go further? What happens if I throw it upside down? What if I throw it from high up? Can I get it to curve? There's also a degree of self competition (i.e. if I can do X can I do X+1?) It's easier when we're younger because there's so many more things to explore and so many things are so new we don't yet know what we don't like to explore. As we get older, we remove things from the list of things we're willing or able to explore, and our level of exploration must go deeper in order to be as magical since we know the surface stuff or can guess it pretty well. I think this also explains why adults can pull magic out of otherwise "boring" hobbies. Think stamp collecting or bird watching. And it's why we can find magic in things we thought were boring as a kid, because we're old enough now to explore what we once didn't understand.