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“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” - Albert Einstein The most curious person I have met is my 13-year-old son, Seth. Seth has lots of adventures, which we call “Sethscapades.” Seth has always been very into and excited about reworks. This year, on the Fourth of July, he used his magic, came up to me, and said that he’s had fireworks ever since he was 3 and that he really wants fireworks this year. Due to the guilt, I took him to get fireworks. At the fireworks shop, he helped make the salesman very excited by showing o his knowledge of fireworks. Later that evening, he put on a show, and he lit up a firework, and somehow, the firework shot off to the side and went over our fence and into our neighbor’s pasture. At first, I didn’t really think much about it, until one of the other neighbor’s kids came running over and said, “You started a fire in the next-door neighbor’s yard.” I thought the kid was joking until I looked over into the pasture and saw a fire that was getting big fast. I went to the backyard and grabbed a hose to help put the re out. Another neighbor, who was watching the bigger reworks, put a blanket on it. The next morning, Seth got up and said, “Dad, that was the greatest Fourth of July of my life.” There’s nothing like lighting the neighbor’s yard on fire. Last month, I told you about Seth’s dealings with one of the hottest, strangest trends of the last year: dget spinners. It’s hard to keep up with all the new trends, as they bubble to the top of the public consciousness, only to die down in time for something else to surge. This month, I’m going to tell you about Seth’s dealings with an even stranger trend that spiked last fall: clown sightings.
In case you missed it, last fall, people started reporting sightings of folks wandering around the street or the woods dressed as evil clowns. Some people were even arrested for making threats or committing robberies while dressed as clowns. By and large, it was treated as a dumb, dark joke taken too far. But to Seth, the clowns couldn’t be less funny. He saw the news story on TV, and the fear drove him to action. For seven nights in a row, he and a few friends took it upon themselves to protect the neighborhood from these clowns by organizing a clown hunt. They even took a few girls with them one night. We live in Riverton, which isn’t usually the center of the action when it comes to crime and malice. Nothing came of the hunts. But I’ll always remember how serious he took it. He had the eye of the hunter — especially when he had those girls to protect. In these strange times, it’s good to know he’s ready to take on anything new that pops up. You’ve probably seen fidget spinners. They became all the rage this summer. The inventors claim that spinning these little gadgets reduces stress. Seth, however, put a different spin on it. After making me drive to four different stores to find one, his inquisitive mind took him in an interesting direction. You see, Seth is an amateur YouTube videographer. In the past, he’s uploaded videos of himself doing back flips on our trampoline and a short lm of him fighting his friends. This time, he decided to try capitalize on the fidget spinner craze. He and his friend concocted an experiment. They blew on the fidget spinner with an air compressor, causing it to spin at a ridiculous speed. Then they tapped it on an iPhone to see what would happen. Any guesses? Sure enough, the screen cracked like a spiderweb. The has amassed over 100 views, making it his most popular. But there’s a twist to the story: The iPhone was his mother’s old phone, which he didn’t have permission to destroy. While we applaud his inquisitiveness, for the lack of permission, we gave him a talking to. You can see the video on his YouTube channel, sethdeathy films or sethscapades.com. |
