Pogo Boy!

May 4, 2008

Much to his regret, Benton taught me a palindrome last fall: “Yo, bozo boy!” I greet him with that exclamation four mornings out of five. He also taught me, “Go hang a salami. I’m a lasagna hog,” but that just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.

A year or so ago, Benton got a pogo stick. Unfortunately, he was even more of a lightweight then than he is now, so jumping on the pogo stick, for him, was like trying to bounce on stilts — his mass wasn’t enough to work the spring at all. As I was rooting around in the garage last weekend, the pogo stick bubbled up, and Benton’s discovered that he is now heavy enough to make it work (just barely). His record to date is 108 hops. He demonstrated 89 to me this evening.

He’s also into finding ways to play with the oversized exercise ball that Brett unloaded on us last fall. This ball has provided more joy for 7 or 8 kids than should be legal.

And, it wouldn’t be a post about Benton if electricity wasn’t involved. For years, Julie has been mail ordering glow sticks online — extremeglow.com sells them for very reasonable prices when bought in bulk, and Julie has been the hero of many a kid when we’ve found ourselves outdoors after dark. During this latest round of ordering, she included four LED blue light swords (“For $2.50 each, how could I not buy them?!”). They came out when a couple of the boys’ friends were over…and held up like a $2.50 item! I was amazed that 3 of the 4 swords survived the evening intact.

Julie salvaged the string of blue LEDs from the broken sword…and Benton hooked it up to his hand-crank generator. Of course.

All three of these pictures were taken in the same evening — an Evening of Weakness on Benton’s part, I suppose. I don’t expect to get any additional pictures until maybe his high school graduation.

Posted in Benton