March 3, 2005 - Thursday
Harry and Jeremy both brought Bionicles to school today for the first time in about a week. All of Harry's friends seem to bring some toy to school every day, so I pretty much have to go with the flow. But I've been discouraging the Bionicles because I know the teachers aren't that fond of them, or rather the violent behavior that seems to result from them we several of the boys bring them. I also worry that because they are made of so many small pieces , something is eventually going to get lost at school. In fact, that did happen once before. One of the Toa of Water's knee "pads" was lost, I thought over the weekend at home, but Harry found it in the school breezeway the following Monday morning. Lucky.

Today, Jeremy had brought Harry's new Toa Lhikan, while Harry had brought a reconstructed combination of Toas (Harry has quickly become surprisingly adept at building the Bionicles and inventing new mixed ones and I'm really very impressed). I wasn't happy about the boys bringing them to school, but I am very proud of Harry's imagination and resourcefulness and it just seemed to me that I really need to let him show them off a little to his friends. Sure enough, though, by the time I picked them up Jeremy had lost one of those knee "pads." Ironically, ever since Jeremy misplaced the Toa of Water's pad that first time, I've been telling them both to at least leave the easy to lose "pads" at home. This morning I let Jeremy take them, thinking that Toa Lhikan's newly built joints would hold together better. Harry even noticed it as we were leaving for school this morning and told Jeremy to take the pads off, but I let Jeremy take them. Not too surprisingly, Harry pointed out that I should have listened to him. I apologized, but it still left the uncomfortable problem of losing a piece to Harry's newest toy. So, we lingered at school and looked.

I've tried to get the boys to help look for lost things at home on many occasions and usually without much success. I didn't have much success this time either at first. But, I continued to push saying that this missing piece would be lost forever if we didn't find it. I'll concede that while I understand that it's just a toy and that pieces will inevitably be lost over time, I have something of a hang-up about keeping track of all the pieces of things. The thought of losing pieces, even of these Bionicles disturbs me on an emotional level. It is a dogged determination that has kept me from losing a lot of toys, golf balls, pens, and other items in my life and I stuck with it today at the school, too. At first their looking was rather superfluous, like looking under wide open tables and chairs, but eventually they started more seriously thinking about where Jeremy had been with Toa Lhikan during the day. Remarkably, just when I was about ready to give up, the boys found it. I honestly don't know who saw it first, I think Jeremy, because they were looking somewhere I thought was completely improbable. I was to busy explaining to them how this was why it was not a good idea to bring Bionicles to school and thought at first they were just trying to argue about that, or maybe joking about finding it. But sure enough, there it was. Harry's new toy was safe. It still made a persuasive argument against bringing them again.


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