Phantom Zones 'R' Us

Hey!  New Toys 'R' Us catalog is here!  Sweet!

Lessee... Trampoline, Trampoline, Horrifying Prison, Trampoline...

Hey, I Know! Let’s Talk About Snow!

The latest round of snow started Tuesday afternoon.  I left work a little before my usual departure time to avoid the dodge’em mess the highways were likely to turn into and the wife did the same.

The swirling snow stuck to the roads and the already frozen roadways began to ice over.  I saw no accidents but my wife saw about half a dozen with some folks completely on their sides in ditches.   She left work only about a quarter hour after I did but it was a very important 15-minute window, it seems.

The most treacherous part was just a couple of miles from my house where the asphalt in a three-way intersection looked like it was carved out of a 100-yard long diamond. Even I skidded a little there.  We both made it home safely but neither one of us were surprised to see the message appear on our phones that school for the next day was cancelled.

Sigh.  Again.

By Wednesday at 10AM the roads were not only looking drivable, some patches even looked dry.  I checked out the situation and, other than a few neighborhood areas that are in the shadows of trees, everything was fine.  After snowball fights with neighbor kids were done we came inside to warm up.  I didn’t want to sit “trapped” at home again with the boy so we went and got my oil changed and my inspection rescheduled for that afternoon.

At the dealership we watched Tom and Jerry and Loony Tunes cartoons and ate movie theater-like popcorn while we waited.  Sounds weak, I know, but there was another dad there with his kid who likewise just wanted to get out of the house.  We (the dads) had fun trying to remember the details of these 65-year old shows “Oh, yeah, this is the one where Foghorn Leghorn paints the dog’s tongue green” and “Hey, I love this one!  Those two gophers mess with that actor dog and bounce him all over the place with magnets, right?”  The kids just embraced the old-school violence with total relish.

On the way back home I stopped by a Radio Shack that I knew was on the “closing soon” list and helped loot the place for electronics stuff at up to 50% off list.  Today the prices drop to 70% off list but they are closed because of last night’s snow (darn darn darny darn).

Ah, yes.  Last night’s snow. Nine inches of dense, wet, packy stuff.  This event closed school not just for today but for tomorrow as well.  It was heavy enough to bend shrubs to the ground and rip the sign off a Chinese restaurant in town.  I think as of two o’clock this afternoon the completed and half-built snowmen in my neighborhood outnumbered the actual people here.  The semi-igloo that was built last week is now basically an indestructible ice fortress thanks to the repeated freeze-warm-rain-freeze cycle it has gone through.

A few kids (ten-year-olds, I guess) had the ambitious idea of using the fairly untouched street snow to start their snowman.  They rolled it and rolled it and rolled it until they saw it was big enough - that is, they stopped when they could barely move it.  Their plan (which I overheard while I was out shoveling) was to roll it back to their place so they could build the next layer.  Their property was about 100 yards down the road.

You see where I am going with this, I think.  

Light dawned for them as well, and they decided that putting the thing on a sled and towing it there would solve their (quite literally) ever-growing problem.  They managed to get their three-foot-wide ball onto the sled but the ropes they were using simply weren't designed to pull 400-pound loads and kept either breaking or failing in some other way. Even with two kids pushing and one pulling they only made it about ten feet.

They had a small conference and walked up to me. I stopped shoveling and said “What’s up, guys?”  The spokesman for the group said “Um… Would you like a free giant snowball?”

I thought “Nicely done, kid.  Nicely done. I was dying to know what you were going to say.”

“Sure!” I said, brightly.  “Just push it into the yard so it’s not in the street.  I’ll get my son to help you.”  After about five minutes the four of them just barely managed to get it over the curb and park it in the grass.  I thanked them and they walked off as the boy and the girl next door took turns climbing it and arguing over what they should do with it.  I just hope it’s not sitting on a sprinkler head…  Meh.  I’m sure it’s fine.

The roads are now covered in untreated slush and the temperature is 32 degrees.  It will drop to the low twenties overnight and will not get above 32 until 11AM or so.  I hope they don’t plow.  If they do plow, though, I hope they put down salt and sand otherwise they are just resurfacing the ice rink, you know?

As tired of reading about barely newsworthy snow events as I am tired struggling to come up with something to say about them?  I feel for you, brother.  I mean, look at a satellite picture of North America right now - what else is there?

It’s 2015.  Screw the flying car.  Where’s my cloned mammoth?

A Small Diorama Project

Santa got the boy this Scene-A-Rama diorama set last Christmas. The school closings over the past week gave us the opportunity to play around with it. 

This is the first time I had ever put one together so Santa also got extra glue, grass, and rocks in case the kit was kind of crummy. He needn't have worried, it turns out. The kit is absolutely awesome. The instructions are very clear and kid/parent friendly.  The included materials are high-quality.  It is clearly marked that the base is sold separately, however, so Santa kind of dropped the ball there. 

No big deal.  A scrap piece of oak plyboard later and we were off to the races. 

Initially, the boy wanted to make a battlefield where dinosaurs fought toy soldiers. He changed his mind, though, while we were in the middle of making the trees. For some reason he suddenly switched gears and decided he just wanted a peaceful scene with a river. I think part of his thinking was that the little Dollar Store dinosaurs he had were kind of cheap-looking compared to the trees.

Totally understandable.

I was against adding the river because I was afraid I would screw up the base.  The instructions made it sound so darn simple I instantly switched to “high alert mode”. Nothing is that straightforward. I was glad to see that I was wrong and the procedure for how to scrape the surface of the matting were spot on and it was super easy to add the water feature you see here using paints he already had laying around.

During the construction phase of this project the river became a stream he wanted to span with a rock bridge. He didn't want to wait for me to cut some wood in the garage so we could arch the rocks above the streambed. Meh.  I wasn't going to micromanage the situation by forcing my vision of what a rock bridge should look like, and, besides, it was his kit, not mine. It turned out just fine.

Oh, btw, I was in charge of dabbing glue, cutting the plyboard, scraping the riverbed, and painting the water and the six-year-old was in charge of everything else.

Bushes, grasses, and other accents were added and here is the end result.  Not bad for a couple of first-timers over a couple of hours.  There is plenty of leftover material for a couple more projects. We would only need tree trunks and matting to create another little world.  

I highly recommend this kit (and this company’s series of products) to anyone out there needing to build a diorama for a school project or simply wanting to pass the time with their children doing something creative.  The possibilities are endless and there is very little of the “waiting around for stuff to dry” that sucks the fun and the magic out of the building process for kids.

I really hope the kid changes his mind about the dinosaur thing with the next diorama. That would be sweet.  See, I have some cool ideas for a volcano with lights and lava and stuff and oh my God I’m turning into one of those scale model train guys aren’t I?

Snowbound!

Well, no, not really. The boy’s school still isn’t open although work is, so poof goes a vacation day for me. The temperatures hit nearly forty yesterday before dropping overnight and today we won’t get out of the 20s.  Tomorrow we might hit a low of zero which is unheard of for this area.  Saturday will be 40 and rainy.

The primary roads are clear due to a combination of plowing and sanding the streets, above-freezing temperatures, and road traffic.  The secondary roads (about 80% of the roads in the area) are not.  The county does not treat the secondary roads but does “plow” them with what I can only assume are repurposed Zambonis. Not so great for people trying to navigate, you know, neighborhoods and stuff, but pretty decent if you own your own curling rocks.  Well done, VDOT!

I inspected the roads for drivability a couple of times over the last few days - just testing a couple of curvy, icy miles to the first treated street and back.  Crummy with a rear-wheel-drive vehicle like mine but not impossible if you know what you are doing.  The guy behind me on my last trip was riding my bumper while fishtailing his likewise-rear-wheel-drive truck all over the place.  He was close enough where I could get a good look at his face in my rearview mirror. The expression was an awesome combination of “C’mon, man, go! We gots thuh green flag, Yankee!” and “Holy [deleted]! ahm-uh gonna die!”  I wish him well and my prayers go out to his eventual victims.

Oh, on one of our walks (dragging the boy on the sled) we watched a lady throw handfuls of swimming pool salt onto the seven inches of snow and ice that covered her unshoveled sidewalk.  And you thought I was kidding earlier…

But enough with the grief.  When a three-day weekend becomes an unwilling six-day weekend you gotta fill the time somehow:

Built a snow fort.  It is big enough for three six-to-eight year olds to sit in comfortably.  It has a domed roof that is bolstered by a single 1x6.  Yes, that is cheating, and it is nowhere near the epic awesomeness of the ones my sister and her friends make.  Their igloos have wet bars!  I… I can’t compete with that…  But I gotta consider the safety of the end-users, here, you know?

Built a Lego scene.  Friction between the team members (me and my son) over the motif resulted in a compromise that somewhat disagrees with historical canon.  It’s fun to play with, though.

Solved some local puzzle-based Geocaches (Crop Circle [GC4HB71], The Red Herring [GC4JTE4], Puzzle Monster [GC4M67N], and Sudoku Challenge #1 [GC2QGRQ]). I have been avoiding these but I will officially sign my name to those logs when I head out this weekend.  You may start the ticker tape parade for me at your leisure.

Made some crayon cars using the Crayola Crayon Factory.  These are now in the boy’s geocaching bag for trading.

Discovered that letting kids use the dictation feature of this computer is a terrible, disturbing idea (autocorrect has not only been drinking but it seems it is a horrible potty mouth as well) but that is a topic for another post.

Did the diorama set Santa brought the boy for Christmas.  I think it will eventually be the scene of a dinosaur attack on a bunch of toy soldiers.  Again, another post.

Watching movies, playing Xbox games, practicing guitar, studying for a spelling test, and writing this post were some… wait… wait… I just got another text from the school.  They are cancelled again for Friday…

No. 

No no no no no no no no no.  Enough is enough. I’m calling shenanigans, here.  Mom!  Hey, mom!  It’s your turn.  You are officially tagged in.  

I’m going to work. 

Winter Doomwatch 2015 [Final Update]

It's morning!  We made it!  The local newscasters said no one would survive, but, through what I can only assume was Divine Providence, we made it!

Here is the devastation from the back window:

And here is an example showing how locals deal with "driving in a straight line in snow"(Flash required).

Last night they made the call to cancel work for today, so there is nothing for it than to have chat with an OCD neighbor who decided that 7AM sharp was a good time to spend 40 minutes convincing himself that a (I assume "rented") snow thrower is not some sort of magical vacuum cleaner before giving up and switching to a shovel.

Breaking News: Winter Doomwatch 2015

ALERT! ALERT! At great personal risk, I am deviating from my usual custom of sometimes posting stuff at 7AM to bring you Breaking News on what many in this room are calling "The Storm of the Century".

Here's what the view of the deck looked like a mere 90 minutes ago:

and now...

Experts (me) predict that in another hour and a half the scene could look like this:

And it just gets worse (see my last post):

Storm Mode!  Storm Mode!  No shovels!  No Salt!  That poor woman... Pray for her, please!  In our own household, it has come to this:

Truly, the living envy the dead...

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!  My cell phone tells me an alert has just been issued from my kid's school - they have cancelled classes for tomorrow...  assuming there will even be a tomorrow...

I will keep you posted as long as I am able.

Going for a Five-fer?

It’s cold out there.  Cold enough to need to keep the taps dripping and yesterday was windy enough to blow the deck chairs around.  Storm’s a-comin’…

We are expecting six inches of snow and ice to fall here starting at 4:30PM today.  I get no sympathy whatsoever from relatives of mine that live here:

Yikes!  I’m pretty sure weather like that is what turned a bunch of fed-up folks into Bering Strait pedestrians 20,000 years ago…

I’ve already mentioned that it only takes half an inch of accumulation to cause official two-hour delays for many schools and businesses in the area.  Here’s a handy chart that covers a wider range of snowfall totals:

0 to 0.5 inches - Drive normally.  No signals ever, near-constant Swervy McTexty contests, horribly underestimating the amount of gas one needs to successfully cross a miles-long bridge.  You know… normal.

0.5 to 1.0 inches - Two-hour delays everywhere.  Annoying non-stop work chatter about the hassle of brushing snow off the windows of the car with the swipe of a hand.  The roads are coated in a quarter inch of loosely-packed sand because it makes them 10% safer on straightaways and 20% less safe on curves than just doing nothing at all.  Gotta be proactive about these things.

1.0 to 3.0 inches - Before the snow: As tradition dictates, stores are looted for all the bread and milk the locals can get their hands on.  Maybe they build little forts or something with the supplies.  After the snow: The citizenry has split into two groups.  The first group of people think that driving at continental drift speed makes the world a safer place, and the second group has 4x4s and therefore thinks that they are invincible as they slalom from lane to lane around the first group coating everyone and everything with tsunamis of slush.  The ditches begin to fill with a 50-50 mix of both groups.

3.0 to 6.0 inches -  Before the snow: Grocery stores begin gouging folks for “snow melt” which comes in 10-pound bags for about eight bucks each.  This “snow melt” is a uniform mixture of gravel, sand, cedar mulch, ashtray fillings, cow corn, barber shop floor sweepings, and rock salt.  After the snow: The primarily snow-shovel-less citizenry quickly find out that push-brooming or garden-troweling the snow aside is too hard so they begin to hopefully chuck handfuls of Morton’s, Epsom, and bath salts onto areas where they remember their sidewalks were once their single bag of snow-melt runs out.

6.0 to 12.0 inches - Before the snow: “Snow melt” is available only through black market sources for $25 per 10-pound bag.  All of the propane tanks for gas grills have been purchased or stolen.  After the snow: It is illegal to drive unless you are actively involved in ticketing people who are trying to get to their job at the hospital or military base. The guy down the street takes out his cross country skis and tools around the neighborhood yelling “Pay attention to me!  Pay attention to me!” the whole time.  Kids discover that building a snowman or even a decent snowball requires a certain type of the white stuff and is a lot more labor intensive than cartoons let on.

12.0 to 18.0 inches - Before the snow: All of the ammunition from the gun shops, Walmarts, and Bass Pro Shops is gone.  The excited chatter has died out.  Even the world-weary jokes about global warming have sputtered to a stop. It has gotten quiet.  People have started mentally sorting their neighbors by “feebleness” and “probable deliciousness” for the eventual cannibalism is bound to result from this storm.  After the snow: Every third person has the idea to design and sell t-shirts that commemorate the event, but don’t actually follow through with it.  Next time, maybe.  Cell phone service grinds to a halt as all of the 3G and 4G networks find themselves unable to deal with the volume of snow-based selfies that have been unleashed upon the world.

18.0 inches and up - Possible temporary loss of electrical power in some areas.

Since the snow is scheduled to start soon and go on through the night it is very likely that school and work will be cancelled tomorrow, and, believe it or not, maybe even Wednesday turning this three-day weekend into a five-day weekend.

Fingers crossed!

Why Must You Turn Our Fridge Into a Wall of Lies?

I came home from work recently to discover this tacked to the fridge.  It is thoughtful.  It is touching.  It is complete and utter fiction.

You see, in the entire history of the time I have spent dropping my kid off at various daycares and schools never has what you see here ever, ever happened.  We could spend the entire 30-minute drive talking about cool stuff we could build in the shop, or a hard level on Xbox Lego Star Wars that is kicking our butts, or singing songs together to the mix CD I made, or simply riding in silence so he could finish up the new Magic Treehouse book, the second the door to the idling truck opens I may as well have never even existed.

“See you later, buddy!  Have fun today!” I say (I don’t refer to him as “son” as is depicted in the drawing because I am not time-traveling from the 1950s nor am I a cartoon billionaire) each and every time.

I don’t shout “I’ll miss you!” or  “Be good!” or “Make me proud! (again, not a cartoon billionaire…)” or any of about a million other things that could totally destroy him socially in front of his peers.

A muffled “Ok” is pretty much the best I can hope for as he dashes off to join his friends, who have likewise dismissed their parents as nothing more than the ethereal figments of a delusional ghost’s imagination.

I’m not asking for much, here, am I?  It’s not like I’m asking him to snap off a salute or anything.  Just a quick smile.  A little wave, maybe?

Something…

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not sad.  And I’m certainly not bitter.  I definitely prefer him excitedly running in to join up with his chattering classmates than clinging to the inside of the vehicle whining and crying and begging me not to make him go to school that day, you dig?  I’m very, very glad he enjoys the place so much.

Still, though…  “Insert smiley face emoticon followed by heavy sigh here,” right?

New Corkboard Puzzle Hint

Wow!  It's been years (years!) since I posted a hint to any of the puzzles on the Secret Puzzle Page.  

What is the Secret Puzzle Page, you ask?  Well, you can find a link to it in the sidebar on the left (on non-mobile devices) or under the Pages header at the top of this page if you are on a mobile device.  You can find all the other puzzles and hints there, too.  This one is hanging in my kitchen, btw...

Why now, you ask?  Well, it turns out that someone is actively interested in figuring out the Corkboard puzzle so I thought I would put out a new hint for everyone.  My largesse knows no bounds, apparently.  No, I didn't get a Word of the Day calendar for Christmas... I pulled that "largesse" phrase from the latest episode of Archer.  Anyway, here is the hint:

Hint #5 (Posted 1900 121315): Lbh cebonoyl pneel gur xrl gb fbyivat guvf jurerire lbh tb.

As usual, I put out hints in ROT-13 format to avoid spoiling the puzzle for those not ready for a clue just yet.  If you copy and paste the above gibberish here, you can have the hint automatically decoded for you instead of having to work it out by hand.  That's not "cheating" by the way...

Good Luck!

Bamboo Ghosts

I am a fan of working with reclaimed wood.  Old tabletops, boards from a century-old dilapidated barn, discarded pallets, cedar leftovers from a playset, you name it.  I like the challenge of dealing with the imperfections in the material and, often, the reward is an unexpected beauty shining through that would be difficult to duplicate with new stock.

Also, the reclaimed stuff is usually free, so there's that, of course...

I had been holding onto a retired bamboo cutting board for a while and I wasn't too sure what to do with it. Since I have run out of cipher disks and little fish I figured a new batch of geocache swag was in order.  I wanted whatever I was going to make be small and simple, though, since I have a number of irons in the fire right now.

The splits in the board determined the dimensions of the final pieces, really.  I needed to cut fifteen to save ten.  After rounding an edge on the belt sander the idea to make little ghosts came to mind.  Some finishing work on the bandsaw, some decoration with the wood burning tool, some stain, some sealant, some googly eyes, and there we go - geoswag shortage averted. 

I have a bit more of this stuff left over so I am thinking the next bamboo group will be little cartouches or something like that with a hieroglyphic message or something burned into them. 

I think the next batch of whatever will make creative use of my kid's crayon maker, though.  We will see.

What Do You Mean "They Wrote Back"?

Recently our boy wanted to pitch some ideas he had to Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds, about some game levels he thought would be cool.  Here is what he dictated to the wife:

Dear Angry Bird Makers,

My name is Ethan, and I am 6 years old.  My mom is letting me send this email to you.  Could you please watch the Harry Potter movies and make a Harry Potter Angry Birds game?  Could you please make one of the levels with the birds fighting the "Piggy Willow" which is like the Whomping Willow?  Can you make them fight Dementors too?  Can you have a level where they save Ron's car and destroy the Whomping Willow?  Can you make a level with Harry Potter fighting Professor Quirrell?  Could you have a level with the Chessboard Queen fighting Professor Snape? If you launch the Chessboard Queen and press it, it will split into 10 different Queens.  Could the last level of the game be Harry Potter and the gang fighting Voldemort ? When they destroy Voldemort and all the Dementors that keep annoying you and getting in your way, the Dementors will disappear and Voldemort will disintegrate.   Also, please make Harry Potter Angry Birds Toons.  Could you make a level of the gang fighting Aragog on Ron's Dad's car as it moves down the hill?  If Aragog catches up, you lose the level and Aragog crushes the car to bits.

Thank you.  Please ask J.K. Rowling for permission.

Signed,

Ethan

We figured “Hey, why not send it?  They will probably just ignore it and move on with their day.”  We told him that big companies are usually very, very busy so don’t expect an answer for a while (“or ever,” we added to ourselves).  This morning at about 6:30, though, we awoke to find this in the inbox:

Hi Ethan!

Thank you for writing to us! We always love to hear what kind of ideas you fans have, and what you would like to see in the games we make!
You seem to be a huge Harry Potter fan :) Most of us are, too! It also seems like you have given a lot of thought to what kind of things the game should feature. How great that you have been inspired so much both by our games and the Harry Potter movies!
We have already many plans for what will happen to our Birds next. They will be very busy appearing in new games this year. Hopefully you'll find the updates and games as exciting as we do. Keep popping those pigs! Squawk! :)

Kind Regards,

Veera
Rovio Support Team

I just want to say “Thank you, Veera from Rovio games” for absolutely delighting a six-year-old with your email!  Even though he is 99.9% sure this is how grown-ups say “No”, this letter is, by a wide margin, the classiest response I have ever heard a huge company give anyone in response to a fan letter like this and it made him smile super big to get it.

You guys really made his day!

A New Shirt

Hey!  The new t-shirt arrived from Zazzle.com!  You know... the shirt I had made based on one of my kid's notebook pages.  I told you about it a while back...

Oh, you never listen! (Cries, eats ice cream, watches six hours of South Park reruns)

Here it is.  I think it turned out great, but, when the boy saw it, he said he was afraid he might have spelled "saber" wrong.  I told him not to worry about it.

I was afraid that I ordered waayyy to big, like, car-cover big, mainly because the design appeared to take up a tiny fraction of the front of the shirt.  It turned out to be an optical illusion of sorts and the garment looks a lot different on a person than it does spread out on the table.

It shrank up perfectly after a wash and it is very comfortable.  Nicely done, Zazzle!

It's Finally Out There!

I attended a meeting of geocachers a couple of weeks ago where I met bdramatic.  We were talking and I mentioned I had a cache container taking up space in my garage - it was fun to build but I was not really all that psyched about being a CO.  I showed her a couple of pics and left the meeting (it was outdoors and super cold and windy that day).

A couple of days later I got an email saying that she would like to be the CO for it and she already had a place in mind.  Fantastic!  It gets put to good use and some much needed real-estate in the shop gets freed up - win-win!  We made plans for placing it out in the woods for this past Saturday but the park was closed to let hunters cull some deer.  Crummy luck, but the weather Sunday was going to be awesome, so we re-scheduled for then.

That morning I bundled up the tools I needed (a rock hammer and a cordless drill) for mounting the container on a post off the forest floor. The post looked like a hiking pole and the tools were in a small, nondescript black canvas bag so no worries about drawing attention on that front.  The basketball-sized cedar d20, though, would certainly result in some odd looks if I were to simply walk around with it in the open.

I didn’t have any boxes (as if that would have helped…) so my options were limited.  I had an old white sheet I was using for painting in the garage that I fashioned into a small bag so I could carry the thing around without looking weird…

Because what could be more normal, right, than a couple of people laughing and chatting merrily as they walked into the woods with what looks for all the world like a human head in a makeshift bag?   “Well, officer, they walked off the path into the forest with this… thing… then I heard a bunch of pounding and some power tools, and they came out about an hour later without whatever it was, smiling and sharing pictures.”

I can’t really say too much more about this until the cache officially posts.  I will say, though, we were a little worried about the location being too visible from the road but as soon as we backed away from the cache about 50 feet it basically became invisible.  There is only one angle that we found that the thing stood out at all, but it is a very small angle and you have to know what you are looking for.  The springtime growth and natural weathering should camouflage it even more.  Still, though, the reason that spot was available in the first place was because her giant ammo container was stolen…

I hope it lasts a while (at least 6 months) before nature or people destroy it.  In any case, it’s finally out there and I am excited to call that a “win”.

A New(ish) Painting Project

Some projects get pushed to the back burner and neglected for a time. This one, though, got chucked into a virtual oubliette and we are just now getting back to it, mainly because I am tired of walking around this thing in my garage. It's been, like, a year (yikes!) since we started this.

What? Oubliette?  Yeah, I just re-watched Labyrinth recently... 

The last paintings the boy and I did had the rule "we have to use only the supplies we already have in the garage".  It turned out great and the pieces hang in the upstairs hallway.  This one has pretty much the same rules as that but this time we are allowed to dip into his old poster paints as well.   Why?  Well, the old paints (both in the garage and in his craft bin) need to be used up before they become dried up, useless disposal headaches.  This is a cheap and fun way to do this.

Well, I say "fun" but it has been sitting around for waaayy too long for a reason.  It's fun but not as fun as about 100 other fun things I can name. Still, though... Time to stop circling the runway and land this puppy. 

I am doing the taping, he (mainly) is doing the painting, and I will be doing the touch-up work and "idea integration". The colors you see will be muted and the harsh edges will be eroded by the last many, many layers which will complete this painting of a nighttime city in a rainstorm. 

I will post more pics as we soldier on. 

And a List of His Fears...

Here is a list of the things that I can recall freaking out my son over the course of his short life so far.  Most of these fears have been conquered.  Some have not.  Many are just super bizarre and puzzle us to this day.  Enjoy!

Age: Less than 12 months.

Thing: A vibrating car-seat toy (the kind you pull down and it shakes back into position) we named “Sneezy”.  Actually, he “named” it by happening to sneeze when we showed it to him for the first time.  So it goes.

Source of Fear: No idea.  He was cool with it right up until the moment he saw it “go” for the first time, then he totally wigged.

Fear Status: Conquered.

Age: About 15 months

Thing: A particular Shaun the Sheep episode

Source of Fear: Again, no idea.  It was the scene where the farmer tries (and fails) to get the cat interested in Timmy’s lost teddy bear by shaking it around.  As soon as the bear started shaking, the boy would lose his mind.  This might be related to whatever the deal was with the “Sneezy” toy above.

Fear Status: Conquered.  I recently streamed this episode (and others) with him watching to see if there was a glimmer of trepidation left in him about this.  None.  Actually, he denied ever seeing Shaun the Sheep at all, which really annoyed me because I must have seen each one of these episodes about twelve hundred times, and it’s not like I was watching them by myself, you know…

Age: About 15 months

Thing: The sound my DeWalt planer makes

Source of Fear: I was making an end table for my brother out of reclaimed wood from discarded pallets and any time the planer kicked on, the boy inside the house would start fussing.  I figured that his new ears could hear frequencies that have long since decayed out of my auditory range and that the unknown sound from the garage was causing him distress.  I had the wife carry him out into the driveway and look into the garage where he could see what was going on.  I hit the switch and, holy cow, was that a horrible, horrible mistake - his vague unease instantly became a bright yellow nightmare.  Full on waterworks, blubbery lip…  the whole nine yards.

Fear Status: Conquered.  He loves working in the shop, now, but hates loud noises in general.

Age: About 15 months

Thing: Animatronics

Source of Fear: A specific Halloween witch at Lowe’s.  I was carrying him into the store looking for honey-do supplies of some sort and he all of a sudden starts going “No.  No.  No. NO. NO! NO!” (not shouting, but certainly getting more and more urgent with his ‘no’s) before I noticed we were walking ever closer to the decoration.  I saw the connection with what he was worried about and backed away from that area.  He calmed down immediately but kept craning around to make sure were were nowhere near it.

Fear Status: Semi-conquered.  Animatronics of most kinds (even Santas) bother him to the point where he feels the need to ask rapid fire questions about whether they are plugged in, the range of their movements, how they work, etc.  The questions are peppered with this “you believe me, right?” tone that is supposed to convince the listener he knows for sure they are not “real” or “dangerous”.

Age: about 18 months

Thing: Spinning globes (yep… globes)

Source of Fear: This one is a complete mystery to us.  He was fine with seeing a static globe, but as soon as I gave one a little spin he freaked out and said over and over “[I] don’t like the portal!”.  I was like, where the heck did you learn that word, wracking my brains over what TV show he could have possibly watched a “portal” suck something into another world or whatever.  About this time this fear was generalized to any toys that spun freely on a stationary axis either vertical (globes) or horizontal (this wheel toy he had that spun and sang “Spin, spin a letter… What letter have you found…”) See-and-Says did not cause this reaction.

Status: Conquered

Age: About 20 months

Thing: His own shadow (again, yep…)

Source of Fear: We got rid of the pool table in the old house and turned that room into a family/play room.  I replaced the lighting with some fairly bright tract types that happened to throw a sharp shadow onto the wall near a toy bucket near my office door.  I guess he went to get a toy and the shadow startled him enough to make him back away and plead “Make the shadow-boy go away!”.  Trying to convince someone that their shadow is harmless and is not trying to steal their toys is one of the weirdest things I have ever had to do.

Fear Status: Conquered

Age: 2

Thing: Video conferencing.

Source of Fear: I can only speculate that he thought that televisions should not actually engage you and demand over and over again what your status is: “How are you? Are doing good?  What are you doing?”

Fear Status: Conquered, although, as outgoing as he is, he still has virtually no interest in this form of communication.  I, for one, think this tech is straight up magic.  Mainly because I am old.

Age: 2

Thing: A Halloween pumpkin I carved that year

Source of Fear: The pumpkin, I guess.  It was just a goofy, free-form jack-o-lantern.  He liked it for about 10 seconds then buried his face into my shoulder and said “I don’t want the jack o lantern to sing”.  Frankly, I couldn’t agree more, but, like the shadow-boy thing, convincing someone that the pumpkin wasn’t going to suddenly burst into song is one of the weirder things I’ve ever had to do.

Fear Status: Conquered. He loves Halloween. He won’t shut up about zombies.

Age: 2

Thing: A walking, talking Bigfoot toy about 60% his height.

Source of Fear: When he saw the box in the toy store and the commercials on TV he was delighted and wanted one.  We made a deal with him and said if he pooped in his potty 10 times then he could have it.  We made a little chart so he could cross off the pictures of Bigfoot as he went.  It took him nine days.  I turned it on for the first time and it was loud and its movements were jerky and overly-deliberate.  He immediately hid behind me and would only play with it if I was in the room with him.

Fear Status: Conquered, I guess. He no longer has it.  He would probably not be bothered by it now because he would tower over the thing, animatronic or no. 

Age: 3

Thing: Johnny Test

Source of Fear: There is an episode where Johnny is turned “gross” somehow and that was the absolute end of my son’s interest in this awesome show.  Period.

Fear Status: Very Much Active.  He refuses to even consider watching this. There is also a Phineas and Ferb that he warned one his friends about (she and her father have just started watching the show) that falls into this category.

Age: 4

Thing: Roller Coasters

Source of Fear: A 30-second ride at Busch Gardens.  He was fine right up until the first dip.

Fear Status: In Play.  If he is trying to convince someone that he is brave he will go on one but his act is super transparent.  You can almost hear him counting down the seconds until the ride is over.

Age: 4

Thing: His bike

Source of Fear: One day we were on our way to the park, him merrily chugging away on his training-wheeled bike and me walking alongside.  An elderly woman said “Oh, look at what a good job you are doing!” which caused him to look up proudly from the sidewalk and immediately drive into a crack that was one tire-width wide.  Down he went like a ton of bricks - unhurt, but very much shaken.  It wasn’t until after I bought my own bike months later that he would even consider getting back on his.

Fear Status: Conquered. He rides now. 

That’s all I can think of for now.  He hasn’t really collected any new ones over the past couple of years.  If it wasn’t for the fact that he could make himself understood (well… kinda-sorta) at an early age I doubt many of the items on this list would be memorable to us at all.  They would have just blended in with the general “kid reacting to confusing weirdness his new world is made up from”, you know?

It seems that a lot of the fears here have kind of the same core: a dislike of a thing exhibiting behavior outside of what it “should” do.  It has been interesting to watch these fears morph over the years into general unease, then curiosity, then into fascination.  He loves discovering hidden things and figuring out how things work. He especially loves to fix broken things and to create new things from old.  

He still needs to be told now and then that “don’t worry, the good guys win” (cool!) or “that’s why pencils have erasers” (he smiles at that) or “You won’t fall out of the roller coaster” (stares at you as if to say that your point, while probably valid, is totally, totally irrelevant).

Meh.  You can’t win them all, I guess.