MacGyver It

MacGyver v. 1. To use ingenuity to fix or remedy a problem using only the tools and materials readily available.  2. Jury-rig, often the precursor to hairbrainage.

N gets this concept and, when the invented item need only to 'pretend' to work, he's a frickin' genius at it.  Case in point:

I have to tell you I can't remember the actual day he made it, I do remember laughing and knowing I had to take a picture of it (at the time I was not doing this blog, either).

He carried it around for a while and kept improvising things to do with it.  It was a "spyer" at one point, a phone with a "secret partment" (why bother with com-partment when you don't really need the com?), it was a "hand-bomb" which I intercepted just before it hit the window, it was nearly a boat and it was a pet robot.

It was as though he made it in anticipation of needing it.  That's ballsy.

Really, it is whatever you can make of it, Johnny.

There is a profundity to creativity and a courage that goes unsaid.  I think about his mind process as he conjured this magical machine.  What made him decide that little yellow box needed to go onto that look-around-the-corner-thingee?  Did he choose the "coaches against cancer" wristband on purpose, had the Loveland Tigers one already been commandeered for some other state-of-the art counter-intelligence stealth device?  And why, I wonder, is the box secured by a strap from his Handy Manny tool backpack as well as the wristband?  That must be a pretty damned important box.

I truly believe that in failure lies success.  In experimentation, try and fail, we find what we need to find.  I should have the courage to look around me, use the resources at hand and amuse my self and others.  I think I have lost that ability, or, as I have mentioned before, forgotten it.  My boys always remind me how far I have gotten away from the simple, truthful, clever, divine soul we all come with.

I always think I need more stuff.  I don't. I need more courage, the courage to brilliantly, gloriously, extravagantly... fail.

You know, come to think of it I don't think the boys have ever seen a hand-grenade before.  Cool, my kid would have invented it.  They would have invented the wheel, too.

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

"How do you spell eight?"

(pause)

"I have a little brain so tell me slowly."

I am having t-shirts made...