I came home from an early morning shift to find my daughter feeling down. It seemed she was in a COVID funk.
This would be the first year of Halloween where she could not go trick or treating in our Norman Rockwell community, where we would routinely meet up with a couple of families we love and run into another 30 or 40 friends during an evening's walk through the neighborhood.
The day had been gray and rainy, dissuading her from leaving the house for a walk or bike ride.
I've had more than my share of low moments over the past year, but mine seem an order of magnitude less than a tween in intermediate school.
We sat down for a long talk. Topics covered: What's the hardest part of having us as your parents? The best part? Ditto for your younger brother?
In the end, we looked through old photos and the mood lifted a little.
My wife and I conferred, and it was her brilliant idea (it usually is) to make Halloween great again. We bought a $60 video projector from Amazon, the kind where we simply take our several year old Amazon Firestick and plug it into a USB port, and voila! We can now project a movie onto the wall of our home for an outdoor film experience.
We added a $20 air popper and suddenly popcorn and a movie are opportunities for the kids to bundle up outside, grab chairs seat feet apart from their friends, and watch a spooky surprise.
We're hoping that pizza and ice cream sandwiches on home-baked cookies, followed by popcorn and a big-screen movie, will make Halloween special and leave the door open for subsequent weekend get-togethers with friends.
It would have been better had we thought of this at the start of the summer, but thanks to our mild California winters (I only recently stopped wearing shorts and sandals) we ought to be able to use this party trick for many more weeks to come.
Comments 4
Engineer has as it’s distant root the Latin word Gene which means to create eg Genesis. From that, some time later came Ingeniare from which is derived engine. Ingeniare also meant contrive or devise. In early English the word Ingenium (a noun) that meant cleverness. Primarily the ancient field of engineering revolved around the development of war engines or siege engines, which mostly involved turning potential energy into concentrated kinetic energy.
I would say your approach to life clearly has some Gene, Ingeniare/Ingenium as it’s basis. Ingenium is a good way to think about living. Applying cleverness to chaos puts you out on the perimeter of the noise instead of stuck dead in the middle.
Author
Thanks for the kind words, Gasem. Sometimes it would seem all I am capable of hearing is the noise, but I intend to keep straining for those few true notes.
Fondly,
CD
What kind of air popper did you get? We’ve been making homemade popcorn on the stove. Our air popper gasped it’s last breath. Glad your tween is feeling better. Ours has been moody as well but got out of her mood after we let her redecorate her bedroom (with gently used stuff).
Author
Dr. PP,
I always wonder whether the Randy Pausch approach – letting the kid do whatever they want in the way of painting their room, etc, might be a good way to go in letting the kid exert autonomy over a certain domain. As for the air popper, it was an economical model that was well-reviewed on Amazon, the Presto Poplite, which cost about $20.
Thanks for stopping by,
CD