A few weeks ago I watched a spy movie with my kids. Now this was no James Bond or Jason Bourne movie. It was made for kids and was appropriately cheesy. But it really got my kids into spy gear. They started pestering me to get them spy glasses and little mini cameras and night vision goggles.
As a parent you generally ignore it when your kids get into something new and ask you for all the related gadgets, because you know it is just a phase and they will soon tire of it. You end up with a lighter wallet and a house with even more clutter. You have even more unused stuff. I did not need a house full of unused spy gadgets.
That said one of the gadgets they wanted did appeal to me. It was the night vision goggles for kids. I wanted a pair of real ones for myself, but they are quite expensive. Instead, I bought a bunch of children’s night vision goggles for myself and for my children. Then we went on a mission.
I’ve been struggling with my indoor growing operation. My orchids just weren’t turning out that great. I was doing everything I read about, but what I really needed was to see what other people were doing. So I decided to go on a little spy mission with my new night vision goggles and take my kids along.
Our mission? Scout out a nearby orchid farm. I wanted to see what they were doing right that I wasn’t doing. I wanted to make sure my orchids thrived under my grow lights just like theirs did. I may be growing in a small grow tent, while they are growing in a large warehouse, but the principle is the same, right?
So my children I embarked on this mission. We got to the warehouse and quickly donned our night vision goggles: kids with theirs and me with mine, which were obviously made for children and too small for my giant head. Luckily, no one could see us because it was dark. Unluckily, I had just given my children night vision goggles, so they could see how ridiculous I looked and they still laugh about it to this day.
Even though these are cheap night vision goggles made for children, they still work fairly well. They are obviously not the real thing, but they help to see in the dark, which is all you need. They’re not undetectable like real ones, because they actually give off light.
It is actually kind of stupid how they work. You could really just use a flashlight. But this was a lot more fun, especially for the kids. And since no one was at the orchid farm, it really made no difference. Good thing, too, since my kids decided to take this covert operation as an opportunity to improve their singing, belting out their favorite songs from that kids spy movie, in what became a late night karaoke session.
I did see a few things that they were doing that I was not, so I will try to incorporate some of them into my own orchid garden. Hopefully, that will help my orchids grow better and will mean that I could eventually start selling some of them and making some money. If that happens, the night vision goggles will have paid for themselves. And that will make it all worth it.
Actually, to tell the truth, they’ve already paid for themselves. Just getting to spend such a fun night with my children running around in the dark and pretending to be James Bond, was easily worth the little bit of money I spent on those night vision glasses. And when I say James Bond or Jason Bourne, that is what I was pretending to be. My children: they were pretending to be whatever the character is called in that cheesy spy movie I watched with them. But whatever: we all had fun and that is the main thing.…