If you ever want to feel your age, do yardwork.  When we moved into our house almost 17 years ago, there were grape vines planted behind our garage. It was quite a novelty back then and a few times over the years. In reality, the vines were overgrown and we never used the grapes. So, we decided to finally pull them and I’m going to make a sunflower garden in the space.

As I was pulling and cutting the vines today, I began to have MacGyver-like thoughts of how I could do it faster, easier etc. These ideas ranged from a controlled fire to using the dog to help me. I wasn’t sure how Smokey would help, but it was just a matter of thinking harder. As I was thinking these thoughts, I realized I was beginning to think like my stepson Matthew. As a kid, if you asked Matthew to rake the leaves, he would spend 60 minutes thinking through others ways to do it – blowing the leaves into an arch so his sister could catch them in the bag or getting a stick and stabbing them with it. Some ideas were creative and some just dopey. In the end, he would always do the task like most other people would have done an hour earlier.

Matthew was famous for flying in the door after school yelling things like “Ellen, do you know where the hatchet is? Or “Ellen, is that old lawnmower still here? I’m going to build a go-kart this afternoon.” These ideas were always followed by a call to Mike with the same message “Matthew is going to call you, just say no.”  Then I would hang up. Matthew would come out of his room ready for action and I would tell him he should probably check with his Dad. Fortunately, Mike would say he should probably be there when he used a hatchet or built a go-kart.  I know other parents would probably embrace these inventive ideas, but they probably didn’t have a kid like Matthew that cut off the cat’s whiskers literally within 5 minutes of having a pocket knife. Curiosity could have killed the cat!

One afternoon, Matthew and his friend Billy put a box on a skateboard and were riding this contraption down our driveway into the street. If you don’t aim more to the left, you will end up hitting the island in the cul-de-sac. I looked out the window and saw what they were up to and went out to tell them it was not a good idea. Too late. Matthew had his sister Kristina in the box, speeding down the driveway. She made a direct and very hard hit to the island and flew out of the box. We all stood there frozen. If there was ever a candidate for a head or spinal injury, it was Kristina. But, to everyone’s shock, she got up laughing. Sometimes we will reminisce about that ride and we still are shocked she’s alive today.

This year Matthew came over during one of the snow storms. The next day while we were out shoveling, he came out and stood in the driveway for quite some time. I finally inquired if he was just going to watch or actually shovel. He explained he was trying to come up with a way to make it easier, like using a fire bomb to melt the ice. This time instead of calling Mike, I just said “Just shovel the F*ing snow.” He just laughed and started shoveling but insisted later a fire bomb would have been the way to go. When you have the MacGyver thinking  in your blood, you apparently don’t outgrow it.

They are going to re-do the real MacGyver show. Who knows if it will be any good. I didn’t think a remake of Hawaii Five-O would be any good, but they’ve made it work and sweetened if for us viewers by having McGarrett take his shirt of every few shows. I read that the new MacGyver will focus on his younger years. Might just be a shirtless MacGyver in my future.