Teamwork, Ingenuity, and a Very important Person

Friday night Coach Andrew and his Tigers presented themselves at Safeco Field, two-and-a-half hours before the Sounders soccer game began. Here is Simon's report on the events that unfolded thereafter:

I was so excited! We were in line at the VIP entrance, which I just figured out stands for Very Important Person. We walked in. It looked like a garage. There were two flags on the ground. They were really big, like as big as a whole room. 

Then they separated the tall people and the short people. I was one of the tall people. The short people got to walk onto the field with the players, holding their hands.


They said we would be holding the flag, so I went with the group that took the Sounders team flag and Dad went with people who had the American flag, and we walked on the field to practice. We came out and unraveled the flag and waved it and went back. We did that about 3 million times. Then they took us to the green room to meet up with the short people.

They said we had to be back by a certain time so we went out and walked around the stadium. We played a game where there was a projector thing that projected a picture of a soccer field on the floor, and a picture of a soccer ball, and if you kicked at the ball, it would somehow detect your motion and the projection of the ball would move. It was awesome. A lot of people got their hair painted but I didn't want to.

And then it was time.

We got the flag and we walked out to the field. Most of the seats in the stadium were filled, and everyone was looking at us! I was so scared: What if I trip? But we didn't trip. We all started to sing the national anthem, and when they got to the part about the flapping, we started to flap our flag. The people with the American flag flapped it like crazy! And at the end of the song we went back and stuffed the flags into a bag. We folded them up into long tubes, and Papa said the tube went into the bag like a snake.

And then we were done.

From there it was a simple matter of cheering the Sounders on as they beat Chivas, 2-1. Andrew and Simon took the light rail home with a small band of triumphant fellow-fans, arriving at 11 pm, still too jacked up to sleep. (The boys managed to carry their unity and enthusiasm into a much-needed 8-2 victory on Sunday -- Go Tigers!)


It would have been nice to sleep in on the morning after a night like that, but it was not to be. Simon, you see, was due on stage at the Pacific Science Center at 9 am to receive a Discover Award. Every year out of the thousands of kids who attend PSC's summer camp, several dozen are nominated by their teachers for this honor; this year Simon was one of them.

The VIP experience this time involved a series of enthusiastic greeters, a photographer snapping pictures of the award-winners and their parental entourages, Christmas lights wrapped around the iron railings, and plentiful free donuts. There were five award categories: Teamwork, Inspiration, Curiosity, Stewardship, and Ingenuity. Care to guess which one Simon got?

We'll give you a hint. It's the quality that allows him to produce a blow-dart pistol with six chambers that rotate around the barrel, all made from twelve inches of scotch tape and a single piece of paper. It's why we frequently find ourselves in the plumbing aisle at Lowe's, standing behind our son as he tries to explain to a bemused salesman what kind of pvc valve he is looking for.  It's an ingredient that seems to have trickled down through engineers and artists on at least four sides of the family and snowballed into a force that fills our house with potato gun prototypes and water balloon trebuchets, while repeatedly emptying it of duct tape.

And it's how you get, as we did in Maine last summer, from boring old egg in a hole for breakfast to ice cream in a french hole. With jam.

"These things," an earnest young man reminded us before handing out the award certificates, "do not just happen." (He was talking about robots that go to Mars, but I'm sure he'd agree that the maxim applies equally to french toast, cookie-cuttered, with vanilla ice cream in the gap.) He went on: "This kind of innovation requires a persistent desire to solve problems in new and creative ways. It requires a fusion of creativity and science: a spark of ingenuity."

That would be you, Simon -- Congratulations!

.