[Note: I apologize that this email didn’t go out last Friday. It appears that I clicked the wrong button when scheduling/posting. My bad. I hope the gaping hole in your Friday schedule didn’t leave you scattered and anxious for the rest of the weekend! So…you’ll get this email today and another one tomorrow! What a great thing. Right? Right?]
As is typical for parents, I’ve spent my children’s lives attempting to sucker them into loving the things I loved when I was a kid. To date, I’ve had little success, Lego being the single largest outlier. Since my oldest son’s fifth birthday, Lego has been a constant presence in our house. And I’m not repentant about that in the slightest. I’ve built things from Lego as a forty-year-old that I could only imagine building as a ten-year-old. (My kids have built things that I could have only imaged building back in the day.)
Aside from Lego, I’ve attempted and failed to get either of my sons interested in sports, archery, fishing (there has been a recent blossoming of interest here that is still too delicate to take for granted) and general rascality. In almost all instances, my sons have shrugged their shoulders and sent me a meme of Sponge Bob Square Pants saying, “Meh.”
I attempted to get my oldest son to watch the Dallas Cowboys with me. A few weeks later, he announced his allegiance to the Miami Dolphins. (I mean, at least he didn’t profess his love for the Philadelphia Eagles.) We’ve enjoyed a few summers of rockhounding together, but that has been a new activity for all of us. My youngest son has also recently conceded to playing a bit of basketball. That’s been fun, but with none of the exuberant obsession demonstrated during my youth.
Just when I began to despair the flaccid state of youth these days, my youngest son pronounced his intent to build a fort. I perked up. “A fort, you say?” Then I played it cool, not wanting to get my hopes up. “You mean, like from sticks or something?”
“I was thinking from some scrap lumber. Could you help me find some stuff?”
Don’t blow it, I thought to myself. Stay disinterested while being tragically loyal to your duties as a father. “Yeah, I think I can help with that. Draw up a plan, scrounge around to see what we got, and then I’ll help you source the rest.” That was that.
Honestly, I expected him to forget about the plan a week later. Instead, he kept bringing it back up. He scoured the garage. He skimmed Facebook marketplace for scraps. He received a donation from the neighbor. I had been just about to put in an order for a shipment of drywall to finish up the basement (I’m too old/smart to schlep that stuff myself anymore), so we sat down and added the remaining materials to the order. This was it. It was really gonna happen. My son was building an honest-to-God fort, essentially like the ones I had built when I was his age.
Granted, we live in town, on something like 1/10th of an acre. And he needed to buy some of the materials from Home Depot, because we don’t have piles of them stacked behind the barn. But a fort is a fort.
It has taken a few months for him to really get going on the project. He started in December, and using power tools in the snow is not anyone’s idea of fun. Now that the weather is warmer, he has successfully figured out how to use the miter saw, the framing gun, and the impact driver. (I know. Back in my day it would have been a hand saw, hammer, and nails. But what’s the fun of owning all these fancy tools if I can’t teach my sons to use them?) He’s been a bit timid about the table saw, but granted, it can slice your fingers clean off pretty easily. I had to significantly help him hang the door, but doors are frustrating beasts for anyone.
As the fort currently stands, it needs a window (we had one from the basement remodel laying around) and the roof (shingles donated by the neighbor). It’s not quite up to city code, but it looks pretty dang good. My son is already dreaming about what kind of gaming system he is going to hook up inside it. [shakes head] I guess some things are just never gonna be the same.
At the Desk This Week
The weather is changing here in Idaho. My grapevines are begging to run (so I gotta hurry up and finish pruning them). The grass is greening. Bulbs are blooming. Spring is here. All this to say, I haven’t spent that much time at my desk. I’m keeping things maintained inside and then running around in the yard like a drunk sprite (a fifty-year-old, limping drunk sprite).
If you want to start reading the Lost DMB Files…
[Click here for an introduction by Jim Buckner]
[Start with the introduction to the series.]
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