I don’t go to Hobby Lobby very often, but I did this week—twice.
The first time was a few days ago, when I picked up a few gadgets for my friend’s grandson, who had recently undergone serious spinal surgery in Chicago. Vincent will be spending a lot of time healing flat on his back, so I wanted to give him some things to take his mind off the boredom.
It’s hard to know exactly what his recovery will look like, so the gadgets took a bit of thought. Will he be able to sit upright as he recovers? How much exertion can his arms tolerate? How much weight will they let him lift?
And so I picked out gadgets that are simple distractions, things requiring no exertion that he can gaze at or marvel over during the long, slow days of healing.
The simplest gadget is a plastic base with green fiber optic filaments waving overhead. A mere puff of breath or touch of a finger sends the filaments dancing, each topped by a single colored gem of light.
A second gadget is a clear plastic frame filled with liquids of different densities. Turn it over and red balls of oil cascade down, turning tiny pinwheels. Turn it over and send the wheels spinning again.
A third gadget is a “hand boiler,” a glass bulb filled with green liquid, and a glass tube that winds above it to join a smaller bulb at the top. Put the big bulb in the palm of your hand and the mere warmth of your body sends the liquid “boiling” up the tube to the top bulb.
But the last gadget is my favorite. It’s a top-hatted “thirsty bird” made of glass, with a red felt beak. Dunk his beak into a glass of water, and he sits upright. After a minute or so, he ducks down for another sip before standing upright again. He never stops, as long as his beak can reach the water in the glass.
I first saw a thirsty bird like this when I was a child and we spent a week in a Wisconsin’s north woods resort. The proprietor was an old elf named Roy Graves, who loved whimsical oddities. Every night in the lodge, as the adults sipped a beer or played a game of bingo, I sat at the bar and watched Roy’s wonderful thirsty bird endlessly sipping water from a shot glass. Sometimes I counted the seconds to see if he had sped up or slowed down from the night before.
I hope Vincent might find the same kind of fascination with the thirsty bird as I did when I was a kid.
When I got home from Hobby Lobby, I bundled up “Vincent’s Wonderful Wonderments Package” and send them off with guarantees that they would speed healing — and keep him from going crazy while doing so.
Each may provide nothing more than a simple distraction—or a profound glimpse into the wonders of scientific principles. And maybe both at the same time.
The “hand boiler,” for example, employs scientific principles like the relationship between vapor pressure, temperature and gravity, and even distillation and evaporation. It may even evoke historical lessons, as Benjamin Franklin was an early inventor of such a device. At the same time, it can be a simple game to see how small a temperature change may “boil” the liquid. Will a single fingertip get the job done? The tip of the nose? A puff of warm breath?
The thirsty bird, too, is both a mind-twister and a simple toy at once. To a scientist, it’s a heat engine using evaporation temperature differential to convert heat energy and perform mechanical work. Some have called it a perpetual motion machine, as the work continues unbroken as long as the beak touches water with each dip. And like the “hand boiler,” endless games may arise. Does the bird drink faster if you put him in the sun or in the shade? What if he drinks coffee, or ice water? What about alcohol?
I hope Vincent will find exactly the right level of mindless distraction — or deep reflection — that each gadget may provide.
So that was the first time I went to Hobby Lobby this week — to assemble a “Wonderful Wonderments Package” for a boy who’s going to need a bit of distraction over the next several weeks.
The second time I went to Hobby Lobby was just this morning — to buy them all again.
Because no sooner had I put the gadgets in the mail than I missed them and wanted them all — for myself.
After all, even older kids need a bit of wonderful wonderment in their lives, don’t they?
Thirsty bird stands on my kitchen window sill right now, nodding: “Yes!”
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
