Nine-year old Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building a cardboard arcade inside of his father’s used auto parts store.
And then the Internet got involved. I don’t know how I missed this story last September, but if you haven’t seen it, take 10 minutes. It will make your day.
Patrick
Patrick is a mid-40 year old geek with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a master's degree in Information Systems. Nothing he says here has anything to do with the official position of his employer or any other institution.
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I’ll admit it. I teared up there at the end.Report
I was a wreck at the end.
That kid is awesome.Report
That’s fantastic.Report
Very cool.Report
+1Report
I love the internet.
I remember the summer after 6th grade I was visiting my dad in California. I had some friends there that I wanted to keep in touch with when I went back to Texas, so one afternoon two of my girlfriends and I set up email accounts. When I got back to my mom’s house in Houston, I would wait forever for the dial-up to show me the messages from my pen pals. I created folders and filed the letters away. I still use that email account today and I’m sure those emails are waiting patiently in the folders labeled Rick, Autumn, Amanda, etc.
And where would I be without social networking sites? Facebook is the only way I keep in touch with the kids from the neighborhood I lived in from kindergarten to 4th grade.
I would be a totally different person if I didn’t grow up with the Internet.Report
A much-needed spot of happiness today. Especially Caine’s final quote at the end.
But damnit, there must be a lot of dust in the air today. My eyes got all waterey.Report
The Caine’s Arcade facebook page has a posting that they’ve gathered $24,000 for a scholarship fund.Report
DAMNIT! Will somoene do something about this dust! Now I’ve got the sniffles, too.Report
That’s just the pneumonia… you big softie.Report
That’s just the amount they raised TODAY. They’ve raised well over $73,000 IIRC. Might be into the 6 figures now total.Report
$112,026 so far…
http://cainesarcade.com/
Report
I love this! Best feel-good story this year.
Way to go Caine!Report
Fuck the internet… that kid is awesome!Report
Yeah. Awesome story. It’s nice when the kid who would otherwise be considered kinda weird (he created an arcade?! From cardboard?!) comes out on top. I’ve got a child like that, so it’s nice to know there’s hope.Report
You mean creative and a genius? Hope?! Hell, I envy people like that.Report
Sometimes, those are the kids who wander around at recess by themselves muttering to themselves some sort of one-person monlogue while also being a multi-character play they’ve concocted. They may be creative and genius, but really the are a bit weird. As I said, I’ve got a daughter like that and I love her to death and think she’s one of the smarter people out there, but when it comes to swimming in the kiddie pool with 20 other kids and she’s doing a performance of some dragons and dinosaur drama for no one but herself, that’s pretty weird.Report
I’d be friends with her, if I was her age. Maybe I’m in denial about how weird I am.Report
Oh, she definitely enjoys other people who are weird like her and I’m glad she is able to find them. Fair warning, she’d probably have you lassoed into playing the role of a hex bug nano or some sort of feline in her latest production. And you would build sets from loose-leaf paper and tape costumes to your face. Hang on, I’ll get her and you guys can plan a play date. : )Report
How old?Report
She’s approaching 10 now.Report
I would totally rock that play date. It was not that long ago that I enlisted my little brother to help me build a 4 foot tall stage in my father’s backyard so that I would write, direct, produce and star in a series of one act plays. Every child and stuffed animal in the neighborhood was required to see and/or perform in my plays. Constructive criticism was encouraged as long as it was something nice.
I also may or may not have acted out a dark version on The Little Mermaid when I was playing by myself in the public pool throughout the summer.Report
How much darker can the little mermaid get?Report
There were a few additional mythical creatures who deviated for the basic storyline. This was also the summer my older sister and I stayed up late (warping our young minds) watching Poltergeist and several other scary movies while eating Popsicles. So many Popsicles.Report
*Serves Ariel as sashimi at the wedding banquet…*Report
No, but I like the way you think. Ariel has always been my least favorite Disney princess. As the years go by my dislike only grows stronger.Report
Oh, Ella isn’t necessarily into the unhappy (or more realistic) endings to things. She still has a very traditional view of the way things should work. She gets blubbery at the end of Pocahontas and other movies where bad things happen to good people, so she might balk at your darker versions of some of these productions. But somebody has to teach her that the world can be cruel and unfair at some point. The way her mother and I spoil her and her brother, it sure as hell isn’t going to be us apparently. Might as well be you.Report
Nice to see that someone still has entrepreneurial spirit left. That is until some liberal comes in and shuts him down for not having a license or some other BS.Report
This was just to much to have hoped for. Thank you for this.Report
The whip cream is never any good without a big turd on which to put it.Report
Mark:
I’m a lawyer and a realist not a pie in sky liberal with rose colored glasses. Or are you denying that such things happen?Report
I just think it’s a shame you couldn’t have been there to crap on it in front of young Caine personally.Report
Part of an attorney’s job is to anticipate problems for their clients before they become problems and to plan appropriately. Acknowledging that a glass is half full is not being negative just an honest assessment of reality.Report
That’s not the problem, Scott. The problem is that you had to go the cheap ideological route. FWIW, in my town it’s conservatives who complain and ruin everybody’s fun, because they’re all cheerless puritans. So being the type of asshole who wants to shut down everybody’s fun is a bipartisan affair–and so to turn this happy little celebration of ingenuity into an excuse to bash just one ideological side is cheap, churlish, and childish.
Not everything has to be an ideological spat, except among people unable to rise above that level.Report
But you will admit that the statists just LOVE to shut down kids’ lemonade stands, right?
That, and arguing politics along ideological lines is why 90% of the commentariat is here.Report
Were his prizes tested for lead content?Report
Folks, though it seems like Scott’s snarling about Libruls bein’ Meen to Kiddies, fact is, this kid is going to need a good tax guy. The money everyone’s donated to this kid’s college fund is in a grey area. The kid is doing business on his father’s property. Presumably the dad is properly registered as a business, but even gifts are taxed. There are ways to shelter a good deal of that income but it’s a fairly large sum and none of it is deductible unless someone had the foresight to establish a 501(c)(3) for this scholarship fund.Report
That’s kinda what I was thinking to.
Matter of time until someone files a lawsuit.Report
But at least you didn’t turn a feel-good story into an excuse to bash your ideological opponents.Report
This. There was room for a (potentialy very funny!!!) joke about bad governance, which no ideology has a monopoly on. But instead, more of the partisan slap fighting. Only liberals can be idealists? What a terrible lot in life… Thinking positively. Damn libruls…Report
OMG the calculator security system is SO clever.Report
I didn’t catch how it works.Report
I presume it doesn’t. Not for adults. But all the kids no how to work it… no doubt.Report
It has something to do with the square root of your “fun pass” number. I think. That was as close as I could get to it.Report
The “check button” was an ingenious hash code generator for a nine year old. I’ve seen otherwise sophisticated software use a modulo function to accomplish a similar goal. Since the fun passes are hand made, he needed a system to guarantee the fun pass someone showed him was actually his own and not a counterfeit. He probably found out by accident that certain numbers put out impressive digits with “the check button”, while others were not. I’m guessing he numbered his passes accordingly, skipping the “easy” ones like 9, 16, 25 and so on.Report
My stoney demenor remained merely bemused up until he used his “check” button on the fun passes. I’m not even that into math but it struck me as adorable. Real math-o-philes must have melted on the spot.Report
This one did.Report
I wanted to say it was a radical solution to the problem, but I didn’t want Blaise to spit coffee on his keyboard.Report
Clever for a child but it was way easy to crack. Super cute though. A for effort and creativity.Report
You should rush over to the arcade, then, before he upgrades his security!Report
He doesn’t really need security. Why have security when your awesome fun pass is only $2? Hell, that’s a cup of coffee nowadays.Report
Yeah–$2 for 500 plays.
Those are some pretty thin operating margins…Report
Yeah, I was thinking that too. Pretty impressive for a nine year old kid.
When he’s thirteen, he’ll probably be too damn sneaky for his own good.Report
Certainly he’ll be wearing a hoodie by that time.Report
Not to take anything away from young Caine, who is obviously remarkably ingenious, but can I give a shout out to Customer #1?
This guy didn’t know Caine from Adam; he was just shopping for used auto parts. But he recognized the wonder in what the boy had created and decided to do something about it. And with relatively little effort, something beautiful happens. Wow – just wow.
I’m wiping tears from my eyes and at the same time wondering about all those other hidden wonders out there waiting for a Nirvan Mullick to come along.Report
Here’s Nirvan’s siteReport