Sometimes, it takes a paddling...

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

(Framed by Wikipedia)

My daughter Sa-Rah and my son En-Uk love Cartoon Network, and En-Uk especially loves Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends -- and, in particular, the sarcastic, wisecracking, unreliable character Blooregard Q. Kazoo, better known as Bloo, who looks rather like a friendly cartoon ghost that accidentally got washed far too long in the hot water cycle with a big load of new blue jeans.

Anyway, En-Uk decided yesterday that he wanted a paddle ball toy just like Bloo's ... except that these things are not easy to find in Korea, and I told him so.

He decided to make one ... which means that I had to make it. I grumbled but 'helped' him cut a paddle from stiff cardboard, strengthened by doubling the cardboard and slipping a chopstick between the two pieces before we taped it all together. En-Uk added a rubber band and a hard superball about the size of a ping pong ball, taping these together and then to the paddle with insufficient tape, so I reinforced it with stronger tape and left En-Uk to his toy.

After some time spent practicing, he returned to me, trying to show off, but he played with no more skill than poor Bloo, who couldn't even hit the ball one time (if I recall correctly from the cartoon episode).

After repeated failures, he handed it to me and said, "You do it."

Drawing somehow upon the force of physical memory, maybe the same that recalls how to ride a bicycle even after too many sedentary years have passed, I tilted the paddle at a 45 degree angle to the floor and paddled:

bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam ...

En-Uk, his jaw dropping, stared in disbelief. (I was a bit surprised myself.) Then, his face broke out in a grand smile, and he ran to tell Sa-Rah and mama in that high-pitched, excited little-boy voice.

Now, he's convinced that I have super powers...