Fathers’ Day 2012

Happy Fathers’ Day to all the dads out there. Oh, and word to the mothers too.

Since I knew I’d be gone on Saturday and doing my level best to sleep in on Sunday, I obliged my son’s new-found obsession with The Legend Of Zelda (both the game and the cartoon) by making him a sword and a shield out of a cardboard box on Friday night:

He’s been wanting a sword for some time – there was a recent gathering where another boy had a foam sword that Little E just obsessed over. He’s been wanting one ever since. I still had a little bit of money on a Hastings gift card, and we went and looked there (because I’d seen toy swords there before), but no dice.

So Friday night, after emptying a box that was full of styrofoam packing material (which I used to re-box a Vectrex for OVGE), I cut a “sword” shape and a “shield” shape out of the box. I emptied a roll of aluminum foil at dinnertime, and promptly cut it in half and taped the halves to the sword to strengthen it a bit. The shield is strengthened by slabs of styrofoam, and has a really badly-measured Triforce logo on it, made from the last little strip of aluminum foil. The shield has a proper handle on the back and everything.

Result: happy boy.

And that’s the kind of stuff that makes you a dad. Not just being present and accounted for. Showing the boy that you can do stuff, and make stuff, and be stuff, without paying an arm and a leg for it.

Right now he’s being a swashbuckling hero. And that makes him my hero. He’s the one who makes me a dad. Even with that face up there.

P.S. Corrugated cardboard is a viable choice for weapons manufacture. Laugh all you like at that sword, it can deliver a proper thumping.