Yet Another Small Project

I spent the three-day weekend sick (stupid cold) but not too sick to knock out a small project with the boy.  Like the sailboat project, this one was initiated by the five-year-old asking if we could build something in the garage.

He wanted to build a toy rocket but changed his mind to a jet because “a rocket would be too hard”.  I nodded, not in agreement, really… just movin’ the conversation along, you understand. I gave him the BoogieBoard and told him to sketch up what he wanted. After a bit he came back and described all the pieces and parts of his design to me.

About a million years ago, Mad Magazine put out an article about what toys would look like if they were faithfully reproduced (non-Euclidean geometry, misspellings, the works) from children’s drawings.  It was awesome and it still makes me laugh to think about it.  His drawing looked a lot like the “Jet Airplane” from this old article.

I got out my planning book and copied his sketch into it (well… I copied the idea of the sketch into it, anyway) while asking him dimensions and colors and making sure he knew what materials and tools we had on hand.  After a bit we had a basic design that looked like a Space-Shuttle-slash-Concorde hybrid, although a lot more heavily armed than one would normally expect of a passenger airliner:

“Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking.  Thank you for flying Kindergartener Airlines.  I apologize for the incredibly loud, grindy, and sparky takeoff.  You may have noticed that, while we possess the most advanced weaponry ever envisioned on a domestic airliner, we are not actually equipped with landing gear. Sadly, all of your luggage and many of your pets have dropped out of the resultant hole that was ground into the bottom of the plane as our rocket engine violently forced us across the tarmac. Again - our apologies.  Our flight from Norfolk to Atlanta will consist of seventeen minutes of non-stop hypersonic barrel rolls and loop-the-loops. Those of you that do survive the crushing g-forces will be required to assist the crew in dumping the remaining fuel and ordinance somewhere over northern Georgia before we slam this bird like a lawn dart into whatever runway happens to get in the way of our primarily ballistic flight path.  May God help us all.”

I had him go out to our wood stock and identify the pieces that we would need for the fuselage, wings, rocket engine, and… umm… air-to-air missiles (none of this “circling the runway waiting for clearance from the tower” nonsense for this fella… no sir). The main body is spruce, the rocket engine is yellow pine, the missiles are poplar, and the wings are aspen. Like you care…

I tried to get him to paint the pieces before assembly but he said he wanted to glue everything together first.  Impatience, really, but a good opportunity for a teaching moment.  While the glue was drying I had him get out the sailboat we made a while back and paint it without giving him any instructions.  After a while he started to complain that everything “was getting all messed up”.  He uses brushes like most five-year-olds do (paint brush = soup ladle) and the quality of the job reflected that.

“No worries, buddy,” I told him as I wiped off the blobs and evened out the color swirls.  “This is just the base coat, so it doesn't have to be perfect.  The second coat will look better - I promise”.  That cheered him up. I said “See… painting the small stuff first before we glue it makes everything come out nicer.” He shot the jet the worried glance I was expecting so I showed him the roll of painters tape I was holding. “For the jet we are going to use this stuff so paint doesn't get everywhere.  Next time, we will paint first.”

So “Paint before assembly if you can” and “How to use painter’s tape” are now in his mental toolbox.  I hope he uses those tips as he grows and builds more and more complex stuff with less and less help from me.

He loves the jet (and the boat, now that it has been “professionally” painted) but he said something about it that neither the wife nor I can quite figure out.  He says the jet is piloted by Martin Luther King Jr. because “stripes are Martin Luther King’s colors”.  He couldn’t explain why those colors in particular belong to MLK.  A quick web search really doesn't answer the question, but I might just be missing something.

Any ideas?