She bombs. Take me home.
I find her, well, entertaining, so I'd like to go to: Blogspot or Archives
PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR CONCLUSION
I waited anxiously for my son to get home from school. With some gentle prompting and not-so-subtle yelling, my Nimrods assisted with dinner while I pounded on the keyboard, trying to keep the cash flow coming in. My son stood guard over the trebuchet. If anyone looked at it, I heard his bellow.
"DO NOT TOUCH!"
"But I wasn't touch--"
"DO NOT BREATHE!"
Yeah, he's mine. Had the treb and I shared the same room, it would've saved him the trouble. I called my friend to make sure our plans still held--she assured me that, yes, Mr. Green Hat (her son), and his camera waited impatiently for us.
Dark comes early in winter, as you know, but the lot we chose had some lighting, and what the lighting didn't cover, the headlights did. I cranked up my "Disappointed Children" CD as loud as the city ordinances might allow (or might not), and we assembled the treb.
I need to explain a bit how one moves such a contraption from point A to point B. You see, this part:
This is the "frame set." It holds everything up. This ended up fitting in the back of our minivan sideways if we took out the back seat. It is very lightweight, despite its dimensions, so we used books, some duct tape, and an emergency roadside kit to keep it in place, held down, and shift-free.
Now, this guy is the throwing arm. He connects to the next pic down. The 7" rod slips through the hole between the two short pieces, which creates a flexible angle, to allow the counterweight to swing and the throwing arm to fling.
So, this all fits across the frame with some relative ease. But, in order to transport, it must be broken down into pieces. The pin on the throwing arm stayed, but the rest of the hardware had to be removed, with the exception of the twister-tie-held loops of hanger wire on the front of the frame.
So, the nipples came off, the rods came out, the coffee pot and its contents went into a box so that it didn't move around. We put all the rods, the pin and its twine string, the nipples, a pair of scissors, and two rolls of duct tape in a plastic baggie.
We set off for the small town where my friend lived, about 15 minutes down into the country. The ice barely receded in many places, and I'm sure it was still subfreezing, but we felt so warm! We laughed and joked all the way down. We couldn't find a tennis ball, but a baseball, with the room we had, wasn't going to be a problem at all.
We called ahead and Mr. Green Hat and my friend met us at the lot. Perfect. No cars in the lot but ours. Under the impressed looks of our friends, we assembled the trebuchet.
"Hey, these nipples are cold!" my son exclaimed as he pulled them from the back of the minivan.
"Shuddup!" I yapped at him, but Mr. Green Hat already joined in the laughter.
I glimpsed at my friend, a silent apology for my son's candor, but, you know, they were called nipples. She was smiling. I was relieved.
The sling we left adjusted exactly as the night previous. It hurled a wiffle ball, so we thought it would go further. Instead, it swung over and flipped it about a couple of feet from the treb. More weight, a little adjustment...we got a yard! A little more slack removed, add more weight...the duct tape? The roll slid neatly, quite neatly, down the shaft of the counterweight attachment and nestled perfectly over the coffee can. Didn't even have to hold it down, because centripetal force kept it in place. He pulled the pin...
I jumped up and down. It tossed it about ten feet. It was going to fly! I knew it! We were going to have it!
Mr. Green Hat took the image and watched as my son set it up for our victory. The night grew colder, too, and we just needed footage and perhaps a nice, across-the-lot launch. The wind kicked up the twine and my friend turned her car around to make sure we saw what we needed to do. We made one final adjustment to the rings and the pouch, straightened the Velcro-applied trough, swung the arm into position, and placed the pin.
We all had grins on our faces as we did the chilly dance, you know, where you almost jump and you rub your biceps while doing it. Tiger's Eye smiled. Mr. Green Hat said, "Rolling," and my friend and I stood back.
My son pulled the pin with the same amount of force of all our previous attempts. Remember the eye screws? Remember my curvy substitute of hanger wire and the substituted pin?
It stuck, and the entire treb collapsed onto its side with a sickening, wood-splitting, coffee-can-hitting-gravel crunch due to the force of the pull.
I quit the cold dancing. In the light of the headlights, dust swirled around the lifeless trebuchet. No one moved for moments.
"Forget the film," I told Mr. Green Hat.
"I got a good shot earlier," he said.
"Don't bother. It's now a model," I said.
I approached the treb nervously, and found it in better shape than the horrible cracking sounds indicated. None of the wood split, but I reached down to check it and the frame sat awkward and crooked.
"Mom, I didn't mean to yank it--"
"I know." I looked at him, genuinely and softly. "It's okay," I said. "The rubric said 'model.' It didn't say it had to be a working model. We tried. We really tried." I knelt and removed the rod for the coffee can. "Where's the baggie?"
He held it out for me and we carefully took it apart to salvage whatever shape we could. The weighted pieces came away first, but the frame...duct tape would make it straight again, but probably not stable. As my son fit the long pieces in the back of the van, I wrapped duct tape strategically around certain aspects. A doubled-over piece covered with a full piece overlay made several places look like the correct angle again, but it was late. Too late. But, it did look like a model. A redneck model, but a model. It had every component of a trebuchet, even if it didn't work. We knew the mechanics of it. We knew how it was used. The reports and all he needed were ready to go.
We tried. We gave every effort, given the circumstances.
I reiterated the fact that the requirement was only for a model, but neither of us talked much on the way home. We left the treb in the back of the car, and, by the time we arrived, everyone else was in bed. I went back to work, only to get very upset and go back out into the snake room and hunt down those eye screws. Maybe in the morning, I could wake Tiger's Eye up and we could align it properly, get those screws in place and, by god, it wouldn't collapse...
No. I stood up straight and looked eye to eye with the hamster, who made more noise than the gas heater and a kajillion mice sucking on their water bottles and squeaking.
No.
I turned off the light, and left the room.
We did our best. We did. We worked together. We had fun. We had success, even if only short-lived. It was a dang good model, definite "A" material.
Now, what would the teacher say?
I have one more page to go. I need pictures for the rest of the story. Again, my props to Ripcord, the trebuchet guru.
PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR CONCLUSION
This story is so copyrighted! Reliving this trauma hasn't been cathartic. I'm on the schedule to see a shrink, so if you steal this and I find out about it, you'll be compacted into tennis ball size and launched. I won't need the trebuchet.
Sapphire wrote this. Sapphire Tigress has been around since 1992, when BBS was popular. I can prove it. My son can prove it. It's still in my mother's garage to prove it. A lot of impressed freshman can prove it. Please, just hand out the link. I lived through it. At least give me credit!
-30-
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