Catching Lightning In a Jar

Do you remember chasing lightning bugs when you were little? Trying to cup the little bright flying bugs in your hands and then store them in a glass jar that you'd prepared with holes poked through the metal screw on top? And later, when mom and dad yelled out that it was time to come in for the night, you'd open the jar and let them all go out into the night?

Well, Jace is up to something...something less youthful and joyful. He's building a girl trapping machine.

Every day he comes home from school and tells me about his "team's" progress in trapping girls. It started with just chasing them, but those pesky girls kept getting away. After that Jace wore sand colored camo shirts (he has two, one with a firetruck on the front) so that he could blend with the sand on the playground and jump out to get them. (Of course, he'd lay on his stomach to cover the firetruck.) He even started tucking his shirts in so that he wouldn't get sand in his clothes.

When that didn't work they started planning some sort of machine. He wanted straws so they could bury themselves in the sand and still breath fresh air. He wanted rubber bands for some reason too, but I never clearly understood that. They were going to tie purple bows to the straws so the girls would see them and be intrigued.

"They'll be like, 'Oh, how pretty,' and come over to see them and we'll grab them!" he excitedly explained to me.

"What are you going to do with them once you catch them?"

"Hmmmm. I don't know. I'll call a meeting of my team to talk about it." That was a few days ago. I asked again yesterday and he said they'd decided to tie them to poles. Oh goodness.

And on Tuesday he was pretty bummed because it was raining in the morning. I asked why he was so upset about the rain and he explained how they wouldn't be able to go outside at school and then they'd be behind in the goal they'd set for themselves with the number of girls they wanted to catch. I considered teaching him the word 'quota' but decided against it.

What ever happened to lightning bugs? Seriously!?