The letter from my daughter\u2019s first grade teacher said: \u201cWe will be celebrating St. Patrick\u2019s Day with a special project. Each student will be asked to build a \u2018Leprechaun Trap!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A Leprechaun Trap! Hot diggidy dog!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s supposed to encourage her imagination and ability to write about a sequence of steps. But I don\u2019t know why it kept talking about her. I GET TO BUILD A LEPRECHAUN TRAP!!! WOOHOO!
\n
\nAs you can see, I\u2019m a bit excited. Oh, the possibilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could incorporate your toy that shines a rainbow onto the wall, luring the Leprechaun in by making him think there\u2019s a pot of gold. Genius, huh?<\/p>\n
\u201cUh, no,\u201d my daughter said. \u201cThat wouldn\u2019t work. Leprechauns know better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ouch! Shot down by a 7-year-old. But I won\u2019t be deterred. I\u2019ll sit at the desk for a while, sketching endless ideas on dozens of sheets of paper. I\u2019ll drink coffee until all hours of the night. I\u2019ll try to come up with something incredible and sure to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about this: The steam turbine powers a giant industrial fan which blows the Leprechaun into this electrified titanium cage \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Go grandiose or go home.<\/p>\n
That was always my motto as a kid. I would get projects at school \u2014 build a birdhouse, add 2 + 2 \u2014 and then go off to my desk to come up with amazing solutions.<\/p>\n
As a kid, there was no better homework than a project like this. It was a chance to let your mind run wild, to invent, and to dig through cabinets in the garage that hadn\u2019t been opened in 20 years. (Often they contained hazardous materials that had been banned for causing tumors in metal.) But it was a treasure-trove for an inventor. \u201cAsbestos and benzene-laced paint? This will work perfectly on my windmill model.\u201d<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t remember how many times the hazardous materials unit had to shutdown my school, but it was a lot.<\/p>\n
My dad taught at the local community college and always took my brother and me into the labs for stuff we could use. There was all manner of cool stuff at our disposal \u2014 a school project funhouse. Circuit boards, transistors, switches, lights, unidentified substances growing in forgotten coffee mugs. We plugged them all together and submitted them for literature projects.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think my grades were ever very good on them. For starters, inventiveness demands veering off course and going wherever your mind takes you. My teacher would say things like, \u201cMr. Thompson, it\u2019s a very lovely robotic self-charging back scratcher, but the assignment was on the signing of the Declaration of Independence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ooops.<\/p>\n
And then there was the fact that my plans often called for materials that were quite expensive, or hadn\u2019t even been invented yet. Disappointment doesn\u2019t begin to explain the feeling of having to settle for balsa wood and modeling cement.<\/p>\n
Sleek futuristic space ships ended up looking like ramshackle clubhouses from \u201cThe Little Rascals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a hobo camp!\u201d I would protest. \u201cIt\u2019s a vehicle for interstellar space travel!\u201d<\/p>\n
Did Edison have to contend with this?!?<\/p>\n
My daughter has her own ideas for the Leprechaun Trap. She\u2019s gone to her own desk with her own pencil and paper to sketch out her own plans. I\u2019m fighting the urge to look over her shoulder. To offer advice and suggest little additions to the project, like a warp drive or some kind of plutonium-powered stun gun. It\u2019s tough to let her be. To not jump in. To just be the helper, and not the inventor. But it\u2019s her project \u2014 her idea \u2014 and a dad\u2019s got to know when to step back, and not step in it. (Damn that growing up!)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s her time to feel the excitement of inventing. And who knows? Her project might work. Might get a good grade. Might even look like a Leprechaun Trap, instead of a hobo camp. Wouldn\u2019t that be something?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The letter from my daughter\u2019s first grade teacher said: \u201cWe will be celebrating St. Patrick\u2019s Day with a special project. Each student will be asked to build a \u2018Leprechaun Trap!\u2019\u201d A Leprechaun Trap! Hot diggidy dog! It\u2019s supposed to encourage her imagination and ability to write about a sequence of steps. But I don\u2019t know why it kept talking about her. I GET TO BUILD A LEPRECHAUN TRAP!!! WOOHOO!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436,8],"tags":[392,73,480,482,481],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2013-nutshells","category-parenthoodandchildren","tag-first-grade","tag-humor","tag-leprechaun-trap","tag-school-projects","tag-st-patricks-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}