Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM) - Scandanavian Shipwright Division

Today my name is Robbo Llamagrimsson:

Yes, in two hectic days the elder Llama-ettes and I finished up their Viking longboat for the medieval architecture fair to be held next Friday at St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method. I must say that I am extremely pleased with our results.

Now for those of you thinking, "Gee, Tom, it looks as if you built the thing for your girls," I will tell you a little story:

When I was in third grade, our class was assigned the task of building weather-vanes. I came home all eager to put one together under Dad's supervision. Well, one of Dad's, erm, personality quirks was the solid disbelief that any of us children could be trusted to breath on our own. He did more than just help me with the project, he took over. He used a jigsaw to cut out plywood letters for the points of the compass. He used buckshot to weight arrowhead so that the center of gravity allowed the tail to stick out much farther, and carefully lubricated the pins stuck in the ends of the dowels to allow the arrow to swing about freely. He stained and laquored the whole thing, setting it in a cement base.

It looked fantastic. And my entire contribution was to sit there and watch him do it.

When the assignment due date came, I duly trooped off to school with the thing, only to discover that it was exponentially better than anybody else's, most of which looked like they had been constructed by, well, third graders. My teacher was so impressed with "my" effort that she had it set up in the school library with a big card with my name on it.

I felt utterly humiliated, guilty and mortified every time I passed by the damned thing.

I tell you this so that you understand I have a certain....sensitivity about parents shang-haing their kids' school projects. (And part of that sensitivity, truth be told, is the awareness of the terribly clear and seductive siren song inviting me to do the same thing with the Llama-ettes that the Old Gentleman did to me.)

So, what did I do here? Well, in briefest terms, I planned and built a model boat "kit" and then had the gels actually put the kit together. The nine year old glued all the hull sections together, painted the hull and the sea and ran all the rigging through its various blocks. The seven year old glued the oar components together, stepped the mast and attached the figure-head. Each gel also designed, painted and attached half the shields and, together, designed and painted the sail. I tried to limit myself to some of the more delicate steps: screwing in the eyelets, tying off the rigging lines, things of that sort. Oh, and I also tried to explain how and why I planned out each part of the kit to the gels.

I like to think that this was a beneficial arrangement for everybody. I got to have some creative fun and the gels got to put the thing together, in addition to learning a thing or two from my constant flow of information about general nautical terminology like bow, stern, starboard, port, stays, yardarms and the like, as well as my more specific bloviations about the purpose of the figurehead, the function of the oars , the relatively shallow draft of a longboat and a general history of Viking depredations on the rest of Europe between 800 and 1200 A.D. I didn't get the sense that either of them felt left out of things.

Oh, and here's an example of the environment around the shipyard: Earlier today, the eldest Llama-ette was teasing me about whether we ought not to build a "poop" deck. When I explained for the umpteenth time that longboats simply didn't have them, she said, "Okay, then I'll settle for a "pee" deck. Oh, ha ha ha ha haaa!!!"

That's my gel......