Today I felt compelled to declare my true love for maple syrup and maple flavored candies and I was about to write a whole diary about it. The wife and I went to the local candy store, the Lakeside Emporium, and we split a praline, which, if you don't know, is basically pecans embedded in a large slab of maple goo which is semi-hard at around room temperature.
Maple syrup is one of nature's best gifts to humanity, and I will take that opinion to the grave. And it's just a plus that nothing has to die or toil particularly hard to produce it. For example, the expression "busy as a maple tree" really hasn't caught on. Tap it. Reduce it. Eat it.
I've long held a fantasy of a huge estate of sugar maples and a sugar shack, and I'd spend the summers whittlin' while sitting on a rickety wooden rocking chair, a double barreled shot gun within arms reach so I can yell "Gitoffn my land!!!"
Hmm...maybe not that last part. But the part where I make maple syrup would be nice...where was I?
Oh yes. I was going to write a diary about that. But I changed my mind.
See, that maple thing (have I mentioned I love maple products?) lead me to think about the life of a particular favorite toy of my chidlren.
This robot arm, which can be had from your local toy store for around $3 or $4. This robot arm was given to my son from his grandparents as a gift. It's pretty cool.
It's not terribly expensive, which is why it's not the best construction you'd ever see in a plastic toy. But our oldest son cherished it. It was handy in the car, extending his reach beyond his car seat, and he enjoyed playing robot with it, talking all stiff and short voweled while grabbing things around the house. He loved that cheap robot arm right up, so it wasn't surprising that eventually, it broke.
Some cheap plastic fixture came off, and the arm no longer worked.
The grandparents offered to get him another.
The wife and I declined and took our son to the local Ace Hardware where a nice man directed us with absolute precision to one tiny drawer out of hundreds which contained the itty bitty screw and bolt we needed to resurrect the robot arm.
Price: .16
That's sixteen cents.
To make the man's time worth it, we also bought some super glue, some JB Weld epoxy and a couple tubes of silicone caulk for sealing up our windows.
Now, I realize we could have easily tossed the toy into the trash and purchased a new one for a fairly reasonable price. Meanwhile the old, nearly identical one would sit in a landfill for several thousand years. But that's not the lesson we want for our boy.
Fixing is recycling. Only better, because it takes less energy.
And it's a fine skill to have.
For example, a couple weeks ago our boy was jumping around the room like he does and he landed right on our vacuum cleaner, snapping it in half during a week of financial anxiety, and during our youngest's newfound love of tap dancing on crackers. GAH! We can't get another frickin' vacuum! After bottling some redfaced rage for a few minutes, and then sternly talking to him about how his actions have consequences and he can't go around breaking household stuff otherwise we'll have to get NEW household stuff, which isn't an option right now...and so on...after all that I introduced him to the wonders of JB Weld marine expoxy and construction adhesive. I'm not going to lie, the vacuum isn't pretty, but it serves. And it will serve for a good long while as long as it isn't a lading pad for a 45 pound human projectile anymore.
Where was I?
Yes.
Robot arm.
He loved that fixed up robot arm. Loved it right up some more. And then.......it was gone.
Just GONE.
Gone gone gone.
Grandma and grandpa offered to get a new robot arm.
We declined. We'll find it. It's somewhere.
We looked and looked for that sucker, but never came across it.
Until one day, I had a hankerin' for a praline and we stopped at the local candy store.
The owner said hi to us, commented on how big our son was getting then said "Hey! I have something of yours." And he produced the robot arm, which we had left on our last visit.