The art of childhood adaptations
A certain local grocer sells miniature NFL helmets. You may recognize them as reincarnations of the little team helmets that IHOP used to give away back in the '70s.
I made my folks take me there every Sunday for months so I could get the latest one. Oilers, Raiders, Cowboys, Steelers, Rams--you name it, I had it.
Now my oldest son is into collecting them, but he likes them because he has become a football fanatic. I, on the other hand, thought they made ideal crash helmets for frogs, gerbils and the occasional hamster.
Curious about rocketeering as a child, I built model rockets. But a rocket is just a missile without a pilot. So, I tied the helmet onto a frog and stuffed the poor thing into a modified capsule.
Now, I hadn't actually thought about the weight-to-thrust ratio of Estes rockets. Thus a few brave amphibians risked their futures in the name of science by enduring uncontrollable spiraling lift offs and severe landings.
The helmets must have worked, though, because a couple lived--although they seemed to hop a bit sideways when I set them free.
One rocket powered with multiple engines did get to altitude--then it went horizontal right into the side of Foley's Department Store in Memorial City Mall. The helmet failed on that one, and the incident left an indelible mark on the side wall.
Undaunted, I turned to rocket cars, strapping Estes rockets to toy cars--not Matchbox or Hot Wheels. These were large plastic replicas. I had a green Maverick to which I attached four rocket motors. My fat granddaddy gerbil was the perfect test driver and fit the helmet--my Raiders helmet as I recall. Back out to the mall parking lot where I lit up the engines.
Asphalt is a bad surface for speed trials. It's quite rough and the variations cause wild directional issues with a rocket-powered car with no steering mechanism. And I forgot to put a blast shield on the back of the car because model rocket engines have a secondary charge to deploy parachutes.
The successive charges blew in the rear windshield against the gerbil, knocking him unconscious. That was probably a good thing so he didn't see the concrete pylon rushing at him at an undocumented high rate of speed. He was a brave gerbil.
The adaptive use of something originally meant for something completely innocent is common to most boys. One of my wife's younger brothers also collected these helmets and eventually used them on frogs that test drove a toy Jeep. He won't readily admit to strapping a rocket to anything in which he put a frog. However, he does admit this:
"Little boys collect things until they don't collect them anymore. The collection gathers dust until the boy needs to make room for the new thing he collects, so he finds a new use for the old thing he doesn't collect anymore."
Fortunately for my wife's brother, he has a daughter and not a warped son. As for my sons, they have yet to exhibit the symptoms of scientific dementia--knock on wood.
Got a story of your own about childhood product adaptations? Drop us a line at bellaireeditor@hcnonline.com.
Copyright 2008 by David Falloure
