Our son is creative. He draws. He thinks. He makes stuff. In fact, he recently made himself a pair of frames for eyeglasses. Yes, you read that correctly. Let me tell you how this happened.
Gary, who is now 22 years old and finishing up college, was completing an internship for a company about eight hours from home when his glasses met someone’s backside. The good news is that they were not on his face at the time, but rather in a backpack that got sat on. Crunch. The frames were smashed, but the lenses were still whole. He was wearing his last pair of disposable contacts, and his prescription had expired so he could not reorder more. Action was necessary, as he was not due home for several weeks and he needed to be able to see to drive back―and to go to work each day. He promised to make an appointment the very next morning to get things taken care of.
I called him the following evening to find out how his appointment had worked out. It hadn’t at all. He told me he had decided to make his own new frames, so a visit to an eye doctor would not be necessary.
Our son has always been a dreamer, his mind somewhere off in the clouds at times. But I really thought he had grown up a lot in college. After all, he had nearly completed a rigorous academic program, and he had interned successfully as an industrial design major for two well-known companies. Things were looking solid. Then this.
If you have a creative child, you probably tread carefully before speaking so as not to dash his or her creative energy. So, I had to go along with the program here. “What do you plan to make them out of?” I asked while rolling my eyes and stifling a little chuckle.
“Wood,” he replied.
Oh.
“Maybe you’d better make an appointment anyway,” I suggested.
“No time,” was the response, which does not explain the hours and hours he then spent sawing and whittling his new frames.
Construction began.
He started with a block of black walnut that was left over in the shop at the company he was interning for. They also had a well-outfitted tool area that he was allowed access to. Two weeks later, he had the front portion of the frames hollowed out so the lenses would slip into place and could be set with glue. All that was left to make was the arms. These took several more hours to “manufacture” in the wood shop. They are attached to the front of the frames using mortise and tenon construction, so the eyeglasses will not fold up to slip into a case or a pocket, but other than that, you would never know they were not professionally made. He then stained and sealed them. They feel like velvet, and they look awesome on him.
In the future, I must have more confidence in my creative child. He knows what he’s doing.