Adventures in Ransom #8

Conversation held this morning between Ransom and Brian, typical of their daily talks:

R: Do you know what I want you to build me?

B: Let me guess, a treehouse?

R: No, no, no. Remember I want an outhouse, not a treehouse!

B: Oh.

R: But there's something else that I want.

B: What do you want me to build for you?

R: I want you to build me a robot that is my size and can shoot frozen out of its fingers.

B: I see. What would you do with it?

R: If there's another boy who has a robot that shoots hot out of its fingers I can have my robot shoot frozen to stop it.

B: Oh, that would be useful.

(Pause)

R: Daddy?

B: Yes?

R: Do you think that there is a boy somewhere out there asking his Dad to build him a robot that shoots hot out of his fingers right now?

B: Gosh, I don't know. Do you think so?

R: (Smiling) Yep!

B: What should I build the robot out of?

R: Hmmm...let me think what you should build it out of.

(Pause...priceless look on his thinking face...finger to cheek and eyes looking up.)

R: Oh I know, you can make it out of metal.

B: What kind of metal?

R: Titanium.

B: OK.

R: But how will we get the frozen inside?

B: Maybe we can put the freezer in it.

R: No! It's not ice cubes, it's snow!

B: Oh.

R: Maybe we can go to a place where it snows and fill up the robot with snow. And we can always get lots of buckets of snow and keep them in a room that is frozen, with snow blowers on the ceiling and when we need more snow we will go in the room and get a bucket and throw it into the hand through the arm...but...(finger lightly tapping the chin in contemplation) how will be get the snow blowers on the ceiling?

B: How do you think we should get them on the ceiling?

R: Why don't we can get a tool that can make little lines and we can do it around and we can take out some of the roof and then we can put the snowblowers in...and a fan to blow the snow around the room...and we can see how that works.

(Pause)

R: Hey! Do you think we can do it in the laundry room? I've been thinking of that.

B: That's an idea. I'm glad you've got it all figured out.

R: Yeah, so can you do it right now?