A Budding Engineer

When I was younger I always wanted to be an engineer. I didn't really know the specifics of what kind was what, but I did want to build things like toys or awesome structures of immense proportions that took ones breath away and did many tasks. I believe this would be mechanical engineering.

So in the form of a young child, having a certain dream of course meant that I had to start work on it right then and there or it would never come true. I wasn't allowed around the power tools so the big projects were out. My vision was already crushed at a young age. I decided to use what I had and what I could con out of Grandma for whatever big project I was going to do. I managed to gather a lot of string that originally would have been used for those bead buddies. (You know, the lizards and other animals and things people would make.) I had some bandannas, beanie babies, blankets and whatever was in my room.

With all my supplies gathered I was ready to do something that I didn't know yet. I laid down in bed for the extremely long time of ten minutes. An eternity to a child but necessary to stare at what I had and think about the possibilities as well as going off to many other unrelated things for about eight minutes. After this, I finally had an idea. I was going to make a ski lift for the Beanie Babies that went across my room.

My dresser was exactly across the room from a window with curtain rods. My bed was underneath the window so my short stature could reach the curtain rod. Now it came to how exactly would it work. I had no idea how the real ones worked and I was too young to have learned about pulleys or any of the simple machines. At this point it was just problem solving.

First I went simple. I tied a string from one of the dresser handles up to the curtain rod. I had a track. I spent more time than was probably needed tying and retying it for strength and straightness, and a taunt line that didn't slack in the middle. Now I needed a cart. I used the bandannas and tied it up longways to the line. having no weight it just sat there. I wanted it to slid down but couldn't figure out why it wouldn't. This caused another ten minutes of staring and thinking about things probably like the book I had just read or something before I tried putting a Beanie Baby in the cart. This worked gloriously for me! It slid down the line, but then caused the line to bow in the middle. I needed a perfectly straight line. It was extremely important to me to have a straight line.

My anal attentiveness to the straightness of the line lent me to probably about ten more minutes of retying and pulling and retying and trying to outsmart gravity until it was acceptable to me. When it finally was. I added more Beanie babies and had to restart the entire dang process again. My tenacious impatience finally won and I decided to give up on that so I could just see it in action. I moved it up to the top of the line and watched it slowly slide down the line and stop and start at places. I was slightly annoyed at the imperfectness of the ride but I was ecstatic at the same time. I hopped off my bed grabbed it and slid it back up to do over and over and over again.

At this point I realized something. I was sick and tired of hopping up and down from the bed to grab the darn cart. Here was a new problem to solve. Thus began more staring. More thinking. In an eternity of five minutes I was able to reason out tying a second string to the cart to pull it back up with. A few test runs with this, proved inefficient as it just pulled the cart toward me and threatened to undo the string from the dresser. Then came the greatest brain storm ever. I slipped the string over the rod and pulled from there. It worked! The cart could slide up and down without me getting out of bed! I was so excited! I ran off to find someone to show it to.

I found Jaime.

As only a father can, he begrudgingly followed me to my room.

The only thing he had to say?

He yelled at me for bending the curtain rod horribly out of place from all the weight  and pulling on it. I never had even noticed it.

Grounded.