Trashed Swords

I have some telescoping plastic swords in the bonus room.  They’ve been used by children and adults alike for years.   They’ve survived many years and since they’re still fun, I’ve continued to keep them.

I got them at the Dollar Store a long time ago.   I was thinking back this afternoon remembering when I got them and I realized it was five houses ago, which puts them being bought sometime before 1997.   I think there were six of them initially but over the years through the repeated banging via aggressive sword fights some of them were broken, or rather parts of them were damaged.    But since each sword comes apart into six pieces, the broken ones were scavenged so that the remaining swords were still useable.

They look a little bit like this, minus the LED light-up part:  

Today I’ve been going through the children’s things and I’ve been helped by our sitter who in addition to being adored by our children, happens to be excellent at organizing things.    She also gave me some good suggestions on things we could do as we rearranged things.  As the time drew near for me to get the children at summer camp, I left her with instructions to go through the closet in the bonus room and make some decisions on where things should be sorted.

She left a short while later after saying hello to the children who were stuffing blueberries into their mouths after returning home.    I went back up to the bonus room to finish up for the day and was about to bring down the big garbage bag of trash when I noticed a green plastic piece through the side of the bag.   I realized it was one of the sword pieces which had been taken apart by the children at some point.

I went through the bag and pulled out all the segments, restoring the three-and-a-half remaining swords, employing tape where needed.    They’re old and somehow they’ve become special to me.  Thankfully, they’ll be around for additional sword fights in the future.

The Big Boy Update:  The children are in “Bug Camp” this week at school.   They are exploring bugs and learning to respect and understand them.   This morning before going to camp we prepared to put sunscreen and bug spray on the children.   My son got very upset and was absolutely not having bug spray put on him—because he didn’t want to hurt the bugs.    It took some convincing but he finally understood the bug spray was to keep them from biting him, not to kill them.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  There was a game of super heroes happening this afternoon.   Each child had their own super power.   My daughter’s super power was rather special—so special that Keira asked her to tell me what it was.    She had decided she had the power of “Sticky Elephant”.