The un-erectable Erector Set.

A few days ago, Marian brought home an erector set for my grandson who is seven years old. The nicely packaged and handsome set of plastic screws, nuts, wheels and one electric motor makes, or should make, five different kinds of trucks. Just follow instructions, pictures provided.

As you might expect. No way.

Let me say before I make myself look foolish that I have re-engineered and assembled at home for my self, my wife, and my children everything from gas cooking grills, to swing sets, doll houses, bicycles and even Ikea furniture (the only item in the list that is easy). You name it I've assembled it, albeit never without calling the manufacturer every possible curse word related to God, the after-life, mothers and dogs. But I usually prevailed through disregarding the non-instructive instructions.

So when my grandson asked me if I wanted to help I said sure, thinking that a toy sold for ages 5 - 8 as self assembly would be nothing but me holding something while the grandson built.

An hour into what was supposed to be a self-propelled dump truck I gave up. I didn't tell him that I had given up because what we had self propelled, and that's really all he cared about --if you held on to the loose pieces rattling off the dump truck part.

One question for the erector set manufacturer. Could I meet the five year old you tested this on?
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O Great Mystery

Happy Easter one and all!

More words and phrases men shouldn't use

A couple of years ago,  on these hallowed pages, I requested the American male population to refrain from using the word "Yum" or "Yummie." That request has been widely heralded and accepted amongst men across social and political lines.

Since then several more words have come to my attention.

Men should not use the following words:

• Adorable -- this one is borderline and in some cases could be acceptable. I said could. Around your wife or girl friend, maybe.
• Veggy -- first of all, it's a vegetable and that's not that difficult to say, and second, you don't need to be talking about something that doesn't matter to you.
• Share -- as in your feelings. Feelings are meant to be suppressed. That's what manhood is. Deal with it. Sharing is okay when referring to money spent on your grandchildren.
• Baby Bump -- this is to me the fingernails on the chalkboard phrase of the year. If you are using it stop, somebody's slipping estrogen into your cocoa puffs.

Also, it has come to my attention that men are attending "Gender Reveal"* parties where the sex of the expected child is announced in a cute, sharing kind of way in the presence of other couples and friends. Is there no end to the emasculation of this generation of men? Please stop.

That's all for now. Thank you.

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* New York Times. Gender Reveal Party
* The Ticket Podcast on same

Birthday Greetings

The following is taken from Garrison Keiller's, The Writers Almanac: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

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It's the birthday of the writer who said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd," and "Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it." She didn't want a biography written about her because, she said, 'Lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy."

That's Flannery O'Connor, born in Savannah, Georgia (1925). When she was five years old, she trained a chicken to walk backward, and a newsreel company came to her house to make a film about it, which was shown all over the country. She said, "I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax." She spent much of her life on her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, raising poultry and writing novels and short stories: Wise Blood (1952), The Violent Bear It Away (1960), A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965). This last book of short stories was published after her death in 1964, at the age of 39, from complications of lupus.

She said: "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

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The Good Life