A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste

When Napoleon was first banished to the island of Elba, to all appearance to the outside world disgraced and humiliated, reduced to the status of an exiled prisoner, he nevertheless lost no time in organizing his little entourage into an "army" and "navy," complete with uniforms, crafting a "national" flag, and marching his troops around the glorified pile of rocks in full grandeur. He even issued decrees, pertaining to agriculture, a subject he had surely mastered in his years leading armies across Europe. He hadn't lost an empire, so much as exchanged one empire for another which just happened to be one one-millionth the size. Effectively, Napoleon didn't let the fact that he was exiled on a tiny island prevent him from pursuing the absolute-best empire that he could build under his constricted circumstances.

Sometimes I feel like Ian is a bit like Napoleon - exclusively in this single, narrow manifestation, of course. He happens to be stuck in a seven-year-old body, and therefore in the life that goes with it: first grade, sharing a bedroom with Daniel, an obsession with Herbie The Love-Bug movies, and yet, if his physical, chronological development were in synch with his inner Will-to-power, to use a Nietschean term, then instead of talking to Jacob on the bus about Pokemon cards, he would be talking to investors in Manhattan (or more likely Zurich), instructing emissaries at United Nations, or congratulating the adoring throngs of jubilant volunteer troops in Glorious Square of The Glorious Revolution.

But of course, revolution begins at home.

The current one-year-plan is focused around uncovering Northern New England's rich cache of untapped - even unknown - diamonds, which happen to be buried just below a corner of our side yard. Somehow, Ian quickly divined the location and went with it, and spent a portion of the Summer digging out the mine, with Golden eagerly helping him, tossing dirt in all directions with a smile on his furry muzzle. I can't imagine when the diamonds will start cropping up, but they've only uncovered about 18 inches of soil thus far, so we mustn't jump the gun.

Perhaps it's because the snow is starting to melt, but today, Ian began a quest in earnest for better equipment for The Dig. He has been talking about it for some time now, but he was home sick from church, so he had my time, attention and laptop, so the inquiry began.

I went to Google and submitted "Best tools for digging," and, although most of the sites we found were geared toward wimpy gardeners rather than manly home-miners, we found some pretty intimidating stuff. T-Handle shovels, D-handle shovels... E-Bay was all the more wonderfully disconcerting. Spades, pitchfork-like variations, pickaxes (an old preoccupation of Ian's), many of them from straight out of World War II, and looking the part.

But this was no idle inquiry. Ian sent me out to the car to one of his stashes - the compartment along the side of the wall opposite the aisle from his seat - to procure his Thomas the Tank Engine piggy-bank, along with all the lose dollar bills and the mountain of change in the same compartment. I brought it all into the house, and he spread it out on the piano bench in the front room, and methodically counted and stacked the dollars and the quarters, and organized the money according to his own system.

But he wasn't sure he had enough money for the items that he selected, which ranged in price from $24.99 to $49.99, so he gave me advanced warning:

"Daddy, you might end up paying twenty or ten."

(March 6, 2011)