Thursday, August 3, 2017

No Tech Day

Last Friday, the boys and I had a No Tech Day.  After struggling to get the teenager out of bed ("What's the point?  I might as well sleep all day.") and listening to the younger boys complain about being bored (after a grueling four minutes), it was time to step up my game.
First came Twister.  The spinner got broken, so that didn't last very long.  Next came wrestling.  That's always fun.  Until it goes too far.  So, it was time to build a fort.
We gathered the chairs from the dining room and made a square.  I had a top sheet ready, but the boys insisted on using every blanket in the house.  The fort we built was huge!  Once the fort was finished we played a game the boys called "Slenderman".  They had thirty seconds to get from the fort to a hiding place.  I then had about two minutes to find them before they got back to the fort.  We had a blast!  Until one of the dogs jumped on top of the fort.  No worries there, though.  The boys fixed it up and made it even stronger than before.
Lunchtime came along while the boys were playing Bop-it or building with Jenga blocks.  We had had such a good day by that point that I decided we could watch one movie, taking a break from the No Tech Day.  After two hours of Jim Carrey fighting thugs while wearing a green mask, we continued our No Tech Day.  Back to Bop-it and Jenga.
After a while, the 11-year old brought out his electric ball.  You know what I'm talking about.  One of those globes that has electricity running through it.  When you put a finger on it, the electricity follows your finger.  He set it up in the middle of the fort.  We spent a good hour and a half in the fort shocking each other.  The boys would put one hand on the globe and use the other hand to go up and down my forearm.  At one point, one the boys asked what was burning.  It was my arm hair.  It smelled awful, but the boys thought it was the coolest thing.  It was actually fairly hot.  Not cool at all.  But, again, we had a blast.
My boss, who I just call 'mom', got home while we were working on MadLibs. The boys started complaining to her about the long, boring, torturous day I had put them through.  But I know better.  They may not realize it, but they enjoyed themselves.  We had rough patches throughout the day, such as calling each other names and hitting each other, but I also saw the boys bonding, which doesn't seem to happen much when I'm around.  They told each other jokes, talked about their trip to the beach they had recently returned from.  They even discussed politics!  Imagine that!  A 13- and 11-year old discussing the state of the Union.  I thoroughly enjoyed my tech free day with these fine young men.  I'm kind of tempted to do it again.  Heaven help those boys!

1 comment: