Monday, September 17, 2007

What's He Building In There?

I'm not sure this post is going to work without the aid of pictures, but I need to give it a shot anyway. I tried to get a picture of the thing, but it was being wheeled away by the time I found the camera buried under The Quartet's pile of "art work" that was inexplicably on my desk.

C's friend, Butch Cassidy, lives around the corner and was over on Sunday to ride bikes and tramp through our backyard and house, into the front yard, back to the back and then into the house again. I never know where these kids are headed or what they may be in search of. At one point, though, they headed down to Butch Cassidy's house and when they returned shortly after, C walked in to the living room and said matter-of-factly to JP, "Get your helmet." Naturally, JP didn't question, he just ran into his room to get his bike helmet. And, naturally, I had to know what was going on. I went outside to see this ... vehicle? ... they'd manufactured. What I saw was one of those chairs that is molded from one big foam cushion, a red chair, tied to a skateboard that was jacked up. It was taller than a normal board with some sort of springs or shocks, and Butch Cassidy explained to me that it was the kind of skateboard that somebody named Cody Banks rode in a movie I've never seen. So the red cushion chair is tied to the extra-tall skateboard and then two other regular-sized skateboards were tied to either side like outriggers.

Be sure, I tried to get them to take the maiden voyage on this shuttle down the neighbor's driveway, which has a nice, gentle slope that would allow them to build up enough speed to amuse me. But they seemed to have other plans, and these plans were to take place at Butch Cassidy's house and may have involved being pulled by a bike. Or a car, who knows? All I can picture, though, is JP strapped into that thing with his helmet on, a grin on his face, and having the time of his life. For about 12 seconds.