Perhaps not his best idea

Mike taught Spring8 one of the truths of life that's passed down from father to son, "With duct tape, all things are possible." It's been well established that Spring8 comes up with some fantastic ideas. Often these ideas aren't able to be executed the way he imagines (even with duct tape!) and he gets very frustrated. Successes include duct taping a flashlight to a remote controlled truck so it can be played with at night. Failures include attempting to create a pulley system so that he and Summer11 could pass things up and down between their bunk beds. After that particular failure, he yelled and stomped out of his room. I found a huge tangle of duct tape, string and a couple of shoe boxes. No wonder he was frustrated. He probably got wrapped up in that mess at some point.

Recently, Spring8 came up with the fantastic idea of making stilts. I know, I know...STILTS? My parents were visiting and I'm fairly certain my father imagined a body cast in the near future. I worry, but not that much, so I imagined only an arm cast. As you can see in the picture, the stilts had a couple of fatal flaws. First, cardboard curtain rod boxes may look like stilts but they aren't all that strong. The bigger problem was the difference in length. After one try, Spring8 decided to add more duct tape because surely that would solve these problems. The stilts worked well enough to get a test run around our family room. He held on to me and we walked (lurchingly) in a circle and laughed. Well, I laughed; he was frustrated because the stilts didn't enable him to walk like someone in the circus.

I couldn't be happier that Spring8 has the imagination and determination to attempt all these crazy ideas. Most new things started out as crazy ideas (perhaps involving less duct tape.)