March 1, 2007
It’s Destination Imagination season, again.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about: this is a problem solving competition for grades 3-12. I manage a team, every year.
If yelling at and feeding teenage boys can be considered management of them. Although this year, yelling has been at a minimum. If I can manage to trap them in the same room for a meeting, they will work, after a fashion, without my yelling.
And they throw things. At each other. At my younger son. At the pets. At random.
After previous years, this should not come as a surprise to me. There was the year where they had a cheese fight in the back of my minivan… You wouldn’t think cheese could be used as a projectile weapon. But you’d be wrong.
This year, the challenge is to build a weight bearing structure out of playing cards. Given the aerodynamic nature of playing cards, you can guess what is happening to the majority of the decks. I will be picking cards out of window frames, and from behind curtains and out from under rugs for the rest of the year.
It doesn’t really bother me, since thrown playing cards are both reuse-able and cheaper than balsa wood, the other popular structure building material.
And you notice, I never said they threw things at me. I am willing to take this as a sign of respect, rather than oversight on their part. Or maybe I’ve just learned, after eight years, when to duck.
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