Into Low-Tech Obsoleteness

The boys came home today! They came storming through the front door this afternoon and it's been so good to have them home again. And noisy. And chaotic. And tearful. And complete once again.

We had a birthday party for Micah today at the local bowling alley this afternoon. He asked for a surprise party a few months ago, so I did my best to make it happen. He was really surprised- especially since his birthday is actually in June.

While planning the party, I was trying to decide on a party favor that would be fairly inexpensive and wouldn't be just a bunch of junk that gets thrown away before the goody bag leaves the party. I saw a great idea in Family Fun magazine about printing some coloring sheets related to the party theme from the internet and putting them together to make coloring books- perfect! I got everything printed, copied, hole-punched and collated. All I needed was brads to hold it all together.

Remember brads? AKA brass fasteners, with a round head like a nail and two tines that you bent to hold your papers together. I must have used a thousand of these little metal friends in art projects at school and church from kindergarten forward, making everything from spinning pinwheels to paper plate Santas with moving arms and legs. Brads are pretty low-tech. And they were the last necessary component to completing my party favor project. Unfortunately, low-tech devices seem to go out of production when you aren't looking.

Have you ever had it happen where you haven't thought of a particular item in such a long time and just when you have the perfect opportunity to use it, you realize it no longer exists and you can't remember the last time you needed the item and wonder when the endangered item crossed the line into extinction? This describes my brad search party. I looked at office supply stores, dollar general stores, and the store-who-must-not-be-named. No brads. Anywhere. I had to settle for ribbon, which you would think would be even lower-tech than brads, but more timeless I suppose. Kind of like pencils. Not as high-tech as a computer, but still well-loved and useful.

The booklets turned out fine and a bunch of 5 yr. olds seemed happy with them. And the party was a mind-numbing success. Tonight I'm exhausted- back to life as usual.