Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Give the Monkeys a Hammer

About a month ago, we cleaned out the garage and shed. It was the first warm Saturday in a while and we decided to put away the winter gear and get out the summer stuff. The kids were not pleased with having to turn off the Saturday morning cartoons. I can understand that, those TMNT can be pretty addictive. As things were turning into a full scale revolt, I had a stroke of brilliance.

During fall and winter, several items had ended up in our backyard. Since I don’t have a truck to haul them away, they sat there until the snow covered them up. Once hidden from view they were forgotten, until now. That Saturday had been decreed as the day they would be hauled off to the dump in the afternoon when I could borrow a truck. So, I hauled them out to the front yawn. There was a lawn mower, old carpet, and a dishwasher. I then told the kids they could do whatever they wanted to them and handed over my tools. Will was bouncing with excitement. He had been watching PBS’s kid "Junkyard", where teams of kids compete by building cool things out of junk. In no time he had a thousand crazy ideas. I left them to it and went off to do my spring cleaning.

I would check up on them and help out every few minutes. They quickly realized that Bosch dishwashers are pretty tough. So they mainly alternated trying to unscrew the millions of screws and just pounding it with hammers. They later reminded me of the opening scene in 2001 Space Odyssey.

Around lunchtime Rebecca came out and was a little shocked at their progress. Though the garage was looking pretty clean the front yard looked like a junkyard. There were pieces and parts everywhere with tools mixed in for good measure. It looked pretty bad. Rebecca made us promise to pick everything up by the end of the day. So as soon as I got the truck, we backed it up and loaded everything on it. The kids were really good about hunting down all the tools. In the end, the garage and the yard were cleaned up. And the kids had not spent the whole day in front of the TV.

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