My Kind of American Football

You know those “hat days” that American schools have every so often? One of those was incredible for me thanks to my previous clumsiness.

Of course I didn’t mean to bump my ceramic-ish moose head off its spot on the wall and let it crash to the floor, only saving an antler… twice… but it resulted in a cool project.

This may have well been the first significant art project I made with my Dad in which we went out and actively bought supplies for it. Sure the supplies just included some fastenings, brown fur, and foam padding, but it was significant for me, as I was in my “moose” phase.

Quite a long duration of my elementary and early middle school life was centered around an obsession with moose (and yes, for the love of Pete, the plural of moose is moose). I collected dozens, if not hundreds of moose-themed and related items over those years, as well as made an entire club around a character named “Moosey” in which we participated in service projects and made moose/Moosey-themed crafts I directed.

So yeah I had a ceramic moose head on my wall from the hunting/knife store my Dad was quite fond of. 

Three different times. 

The third one I still have intact (knock on wood), but the first two ended in a heaping pile of shattered pieces, except for one antler from each.

These antlers would go on to create the best football helmet I’ve ever seen:

It’s been many years since we made it (I think it was around the start of the sixth grade) so I don’t recall the exact steps we took, but I remember there was some drilling, attaching, glueing, and decorating at my Grandad’s workshop. What I do remember quite fondly is the day I wore it to school… and the teachers could do nothing about it, as it was an American School system “hat day”.

The number of looks I got was phenomenal. 

I understand the negative connotations with anyone self-absorbed, but I have to admit I quite enjoy showing off the hard work (even if my Dad did most of it in this case). It was fantastic.