Today we are introducing a new feature: Boys Will Be Boys. It is separate from, but not unrelated to, The Dangerous Quest, my attempt to do every challenge in The Dangerous Book for Boys with my sons in a year. It came about after I put out a call a couple of weeks ago for [...]
Archive for May, 2009
Boys Will Be Boys: Snipe Hunting
Posted in Boys and Girls, Childhood Memories, Easy, Inappropropriate, Nature, Outdoors, Six and Up, tagged Boys, Boys and Girls, Fathers, Snipe Hunting on May 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
More Boys Will Be Boys: How to Spit
Posted in Boys and Girls, Easy, Inappropropriate, Moms and Dads, Nature, Outdoors, Six and Up, tagged Boys, Fathers, Moms and Dads, Spitting Contest, Spitting Off a Bridge on May 29, 2009 | 1 Comment »
It is a proven fact that men spit more than women. Go to a girls’ or women’s softball game and you will see very little spitting, if any. Watch a major league baseball game on TV, however, and you will see things flying out of men’s mouths at a shocking rate. Why this is I [...]
The True Story of a Girl Who Shot a Book (1 of 3)
Posted in Boys and Girls, Childhood Memories, Moms and Dads, People, Readin' & Writin', tagged Boys and Girls, Childhood Memories, Children's Books, Moms and Dads on May 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Among the many fascinating things about Lillian Kaiser (pictured here on the year of her graduation from Bryn Mawr), she is the only person I know who has ever shot a book. She did this when she was eleven, in 1942, in the basement of her family home on Summerland Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. The [...]
How to Wrap a Book: An Expert’s Guide (2 of 3)
Posted in Boys and Girls, Childhood Memories, Crafts, Easy, Indoors, Moms and Dads, Readin' & Writin', Uncategorized, tagged Boys and Girls, Moms and Dads, Paper Folding, Wrapping a Package on May 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
While The Dangerous Book for Boys, the bestselling manual for boys that serves as the inspiration and guide for this quest, concedes that “wrapping a package in brown paper and string” (p. 180) is hardly a dangerous activity, it argues that boys will nevertheless derive a hands-on satisfaction from knowing how to do it. Thus [...]
Give Your Book a Little Hat (3 of 3)
Posted in Boys and Girls, Childhood Memories, Crafts, Easy, Indoors, Moms and Dads, Readin' & Writin', Six and Up, tagged Boys and Girls, Crafts, Making a Bookmark, Moms and Dads, Paper Folding on May 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Lillian Kaiser, who studied Spanish literature at Bryn Mawr-she much admired Don Quixote, also one of my heroes and another inspiration for this odd, tilting-at-windmills quest the boys and I are now embarked on-likes to read weighty philosophical and religious works with footnotes, indexes and bibliographies. But even if your tastes run to lighter fare, [...]
That’s Inappropriate! 52-Card Pickup, Arm Farts, and More
Posted in Inappropropriate, tagged 52 Card Pickup, Arm farts, Boys, Poker, Ring and Run on May 15, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Man, talk about an unexpected turn of events. Last week I stumbled onto the most surprising and astonishing discoveries to date in The Dangerous Quest: Competitive belching. Pull My Finger. Indian rope burn. Ringing the doorbell of someone’s house and running away, aka Ring and Run or Knockout Junior. Rubberband fights. Spitballs. Prank calls. Secretly [...]
Pull My Finger, or Why You Can’t Take the Boy out of the Man
Posted in Inappropropriate, tagged Boys and Girls, Fathers, Pull My Finger, Toilet papering Houses on May 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
So, as I was saying, in the truly genuine desire to find out more about the secret lives of boys, I sent out this blast email to a bunch of men I know: Okay fellas, I need your help. As part of The Dangerous Quest (what, you’re not hip to that? See it and subscribe [...]
More Inappropriateness, and an “Awww” Moment
Posted in Boys and Girls, Easy, Inappropropriate, Nature, Outdoors, Six and Up, tagged Boys and Girls, Cloud Watching, Fathers, Intentional Belching, Moms and Dads, Photography on May 15, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Lest there be concern that I am abandoning The Dangerous Quest for The Dangerous and Inappropriate Quest, well, I don’t think so. I’m not sure where any of this is leading me, frankly, although I can see how well-intentioned men and women might disagree on what is appropriate, or not, for their children. For instance, [...]
From Secret Inks to Memories of My Father
Posted in Boys and Girls, Childhood Memories, Moms and Dads, tagged Ancestors, Boys, Childhood Memories, Fathers, Secret Inks on May 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The latest in my quest to do all the challenges in The Dangerous Book for Boys with my sons in a year … After our last episode in The Dangerous Quest, I asked my sons what they most enjoyed about creating invisible ink. Gabe said it was being able to write a message in urine. [...]
The Blotting Paper Chronicles, or How We Made—Or Didn’t Make—a Battery
Posted in Boys and Girls, Eight and Up, Indoors, Moderate Difficulty, Moms and Dads, Parenting Tips, Science, tagged Blotting paper, Boys and Girls, Making a Battery, Moms and Dads, Science Project, Secret Inks on May 8, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Faithful followers of The Dangerous Quest (and you ARE growing in number) deserve an apology because more than a month ago the boys and I started making a homemade battery. (See “Hearing the Voice” and “What the Heck is Blotting Paper?” to catch up.) But since then I have not said one peep about it. [...]
Fire! Flying Urine! Our Most Dangerous Quest Yet
Posted in Boys and Girls, Crafts, Easy, Indoors, Parenting Tips, Six and Up, tagged Boys and Girls, Fathers, Moms and Dads, Secret Inks on May 1, 2009 | 1 Comment »
For this challenge, we finally put the “Dangerous” in The Dangerous Book for Boys. As many of you know, for the past couple of months I’ve been doing activities with my sons from The Dangerous Book for Boys, a bestselling manual written by a pair of Englishmen on what every boy should know as part [...]
