For the want of a fastener

Usually when Joey gets home, the Witching Hour begins. They both want to play a game, but neither want to share any of the parts or toys or pieces. It isn't good enough for each of them to have a computer, they want to be on the same computer. One things they hardly ever do is go over to the craft table and start making anything beyond maybe drawing or writing with magic markers.

With all the Christmas stuff out, I have most of the craft stuff put away, and blocked off by other stuff we usually have out, but right now needed out of the way for Christmas. So- you guessed it- today they wanted to make stuff. Andy wanted to make stick puppets (guess where the sticks are?) and Joey wanted to make a paper-plate clock. I managed the plates, but not the construction paper Joey wanted to make the hands. Then came the ultimate offense.

In order to make a paper plate clock, the hands have to be held on by a fastener thing, a little brass or steel thing that you put through the hole of loose-leaf paper, then it butterflies out like a mollybolt to hold the papers together. This lovely little device allows the hands to move while attached to the plate.

I don't own any.



The meltdown was immediate, but thankfully quicker than usual, and I got him to use his words to ask to go to the store to buy one. Into the car and off to Staples we go! Certainly the one store on earth that will have paper fasteners, right?

Wrong.

Three stores later, and we still have no paper fasteners. I have distracted him with a plastic schoolbus from the Roses(its closing, so it was a whopping fifty cents) and a playdate with Max and Charlie and Jack (which we were late for, looking for fasteners), but no clock. What am I going to do?

FRIDAY UPDATE: I found some very expensive ones at A.C.Moore. Joey got to make his clock today!