Blaise achieves his first year on the 13th of July. I walk around a store today wondering what to buy him. I think: a pocketknife. I think every father wants to buy his son a pocketknife. I don’t think Blaise has the strength yet to open a pocketknife. So, the knife idea is out. I buy a toy Austin Mini, big enough so he won’t choke on it – safety first, that’s my motto.<\/p>\n
As I walk around I have an epiphany: I’ll buy Blaise a great gift each year and when he becomes a man at age 13, he’ll receive the 12 gifts that I’ve been storing up for him. Stuff every man should have. I really want Blaise to experience a rite of passage when he turns 13 – hike the Appalachian Trail<\/a> or memorization task (book of John?) for examples. Then I can present him with tools for life as a symbol of recognition as a man.<\/p>\n So… I need a list of 12 items. Here’s what I have so far:<\/p>\n 1. Leatherbound Pocket Bible If you have some ideas for the essentials list, I’d love to hear them. I don’t want to buy electronic stuff that will be out of date in 2018 and incompatible with computers of that age – iPods and cell phones are out. Just good old fashioned survival \/ edifying stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blaise achieves his first year on the 13th of July. I walk around a store today wondering what to buy him. I think: a pocketknife. I think every father wants to buy his son a pocketknife. I don’t think Blaise has the strength yet to open a pocketknife. So, the knife idea is out. I … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,30],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-admin","4":"post-659","6":"format-standard","7":"category-fatherhood","8":"category-zr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
2. Swiss Army Knife, sheath, belt
3. Zippo Lighter
4. Compass
5. Sleeping Bag
6. Hard Cover set of The Lord of the Rings
7. Musical Instrument (his choice)
8. Toolbox full of tools
9. Watch
10. Easel with drawing\/ painting implements
11. Camera
12. Leatherbound Journal with really nice pens
13. Detailed family tree chart
14. Shaving Kit
15. Wallet, Bank Account
16. Map of the World
17. Cribbage board and 2 decks of cards
18. Basic Chemistry, Biology, and Physics texts
19. Video Camera
20. Weights
21. Collection of 100 essential songs
22. Collection of 10 essential films
23. Recipe book, Pot, Spoon
24. Paddle for Canoeing
25. The Journal his parents kept about him for his first years<\/p>\n