30 – Smelt Go with Youth

RUBBERY SHRUBBERY Post 30

This is the Rubbery Shrubbery (RS) blog, which tells you about Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, and its inhabitants—called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns)—as they acquire a Major League Baseball franchise. To learn more about Yachats (where nature happens every day), please go to this page or go to GoYachats.

We have a treat for you today—Smelt co-founder Bebe Broadbent is here! She joins us to write a post about the construction of the new stadium that soon will be the home of the Yachats Smelt.

Smelt Go with Youth
by Bebe Broadbent

Brassica Chin and her Smelt Stadium Committee are the cleverest folks alive. They’ve figured out how to save a fortune in building materials and labor. We’ll discuss this with Brassica.

Bebe: Brassica, coming up with the idea to have kids build the stadium with LEGO® blocks was a major breakthrough, wasn’t it?

Brassica: Oh, you bet! Saving us a fortune. By the way, we won’t need to add the ® when we say LEGO from here on—once is enough to avoid being sued.

Bebe: Thank goodness… I wasn’t sure I was pronouncing ® right. I suppose we need to stay in uppercase, though, don’t you think? Anyway, I see, the kids have started construction already. Aren’t they cute little dickens?

Brassica: Cute as a sow’s ear and so enthusiastic.

Bebe: One thing I don’t understand, though. I know the bricks are interlocking (see Fig. 1) but fitted so loosely that a tyke can pull them apart. So what will hold the LEGO blocks together tightly enough to support a whole stadium? The kids aren’t using glue or any kind of mortar.

Figure 1. Interlocking LEGO bricks.*

Brassica: Well, this was a great stroke of luck. It turns out the hands of any five-year-old are naturally sticky. We don’t know what the stickiness is or where it comes from. But it works like a wonder.

Bebe: And every little kid is sticky, right?

Brassica: Yep, continuous stickiness. So a kid handles a LEGO block and it’ll stick to anything. Better than glue. One big problem, though, is the moms—their obsession with hand washing.

Bebe: But you’ve found a workaround?

Brassica: Sure. We started some rumors, and then provided coffee, pastries, and a place to sit and gossip. Keeps them distracted for hours.

Bebe: Amazing! So, who is the tall lady directing the kids?

Brassica: That’s Tamitha Wolf, author of the best seller Recreational Therianthropy: Pros and Cons. She has a degree in concinnity from Cannibal State.** We don’t know what she was before she became an art teacher.

Bebe: She seems awfully busy keeping kids from putting blocks in their mouths.

Brassica: Yeah, that’s our other problem. They like the taste of the secret adhesive. They’d lick it all off if Tamitha didn’t keep a sharp eye on them.

Bebe: Oh, I see the kids have made some darling LEGO animals—a puppy, a bunny… How will these be used in the stadium?

Brassica: Well, they won’t. It’s just that kids can’t stay focused. They go off on tangents. Come around to this side and look at this. Tamitha had her back turned for just a few minutes and we have a life-size T. rex.

Bebe: Omigosh! It’s so real, it’s scary! Now, that can’t be appropriate for a family-oriented stadium.

Brassica: Nope. We hate to squelch their unbridled creativity, but the big lizard was the last straw. There comes a time when you have to be firm with a five-year-old and say “Crankelwitz, wouldn’t you like to play with the other children?”

Bebe: Well, the stadium seems to be coming along nicely, especially considering the obstacles.

Brassica: Yes, and I haven’t told you about our biggest problem—kids like to build something, and then smash it. It’s their unnatural love of entropy.

Bebe: Yeah, some never outgrow it. Most become NASCAR fans.

* Photo by Alan Chia. From Wikipedia.
** Cannibal State University is located in the company town of Cannibal Mountain, Oregon, which is owned and operated by the Cannibal Soup Company.

Next time: We will visit “The House that Milk and Cookies Built” again, but this time we will interview Yabby Weezer who has an exciting business proposition for the Smelt.

NOTE: Many times we’ve been asked “what’s going on up there at Cannibal Mountain?” We assure you that it’s just a typical college/soup company town.

NOTE AGAIN: Eric Sallee and Dave Baldwin are waiting patiently for guest celebrities to plunge into writing posts for the Rubbery Shrubbery blog. Candidates must have a good sense of humor and must have heard of baseball. If any of you happen to know or be Peter De Vries or Calvin Trillin, please contact us immediately. Thank you.