Cardboard box: Gateway to adventure

There are times that I miss being a kid. Everything is different in the eyes of a child. Each and every new thing they discover is an opportunity to imagine it in its grandest state possible. Those aren’t chairs pushed into the hall so dad can sweep. No, that is a train making its way across a vast plain, its engine puffing smoke into the clear blue skies. That paper airplane is not paper. It is metal and fury, and it belches fire as it blazes across the sky.

And that cardboard box? That’s an airplane too.

Decorating the airplane

Given the time of year, my propensity for Amazon vice the local mall (which means I have a surplus of carboard in the house), and a rainy Saturday, I decided to take the imagined airplane and turn it into something airplane-ier. I was just going to tape a box to the front and call it the nose, but Matthew looked at that and said, “No, Dad. That’s not right. It needs to be a jet fighter.” So I tried again. The pointy nose was met with approval, but wings were requested.

Preparing for take off

Matthew proclaimed himself captain. “Ellie can be the officer,” he added. The captain and his appointed officer decorated their fighter for a time before Matthew looked around and requested a window. “Jet fighters have windows.” How could I have forgotten the windows?

Window? Window.

Matthew looked up. “How will we keep the rain off our heads, Dad?” He scrunched his face in concentration. “I know! We need a roof. We don’t want to get wet. That would be silly.” Clearly, the number one concern when flying a jet fighter in your living room is a head wet from the rain. So a retractable roof was added. The roof was operable by either the captain or the officer (much to the captain’s chagrin). I regret to inform you that I did not make the roof self-retracting.

Deploying the roof

Roof engaged. I repeat, roof engaged.

It was at this point that Matthew re-christened the jet fighter as a space ship. The pair of travelers flew wherever their whimsy took them. There was an attempted coup by the officer that was resisted by the captain. Mediation by the build crew (Dad) resolved the issue with an overdue snack.

Freedom!

The team took the time to perform some basic maintenance.

Do we need this part? I think we need this part.

And then they practiced diplomacy with the locals.

I just want you to know that we respect the silly customs of your furry people.

A helmet and steering wheel were requested. Once fabricated by the rapidly tiring build crew, the space ship transformed into a race car… that flies. “It has two buttons, Dad. One to go fast. And one to fly. Like this. Whoooooosh!” The act of flight was pantomimed with a hand soaring through the air.

The captain drove and flew until he could drive and fly no longer. Then he crash landed in a foreign land, too exhausted to move.