Fallon on Mustache Day

My son Fallon, who is five, has been worrying about Leprechauns. They’ve been talking in school about St. Patrick’s Day and a lot of that talk involves Leprechaun mischief. They come in your house, make a mess, causing problems of all sorts Fallon says. So yesterday he came up with a Leprechaun defense strategy that I think is worth reading about.

“First we’ll take my money,” said Fallon, “and we’ll turn it into dollars.”

Fallon is a scrounger for change. When he finds money he puts it in a jar. Sometimes he asks me if I have any spare coins and I’ll give him what’s in my pockets. Like the Amish, with Fallon it’s all in and no out so the coin stash has grown substantially over time. I estimate it today at about $230, none of which he sees as spendable because spending money, in his view, is paper.

But the Leprechaun threat is significant enough that Fallon wants to turn his coins into dollars and spend them on defensive technology.

I find it charming, frankly, that Fallon is assuming responsibility for defending our family. He isn’t asking me to spend anything on Leprechaun defense.  How great a son is that?

“We’ll take my money to Home Depot and buy mirrors,” he continued.  “We’ll get enough mirrors to cover the entire house.  Then, when the Leprechauns are coming toward our house they’ll see themselves in the mirrors and say, ‘Hmm, there’s a group of Leprechauns going into that house already, let’s move on to the next house.‘ And so our house will be saved.”

I am not making this up.

Stories like this give me hope for the future. Our best hope not just as a nation but as a civilization is that we raise our children to be thinkers. I have no worries about Fallon on that score.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Hopefully where you live Home Depot is still open.