My Word's Worth: an occasional column by Marylaine Block

December 3, 2003

It's three in the morning of Christmas Day
and Santa's four continents behind.
With baby gyms, dollhouses, toy motor speedways,
the poor man's going out of his mind.

He's got ratchets and drillbits and screws, brads and bolts.
He has driven screws, hammered and pliared.
The scariest words in the whole English language
Are these: "SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED."

He's plugged printers and modems and speakers and such
into color-matched slots in computers;
He's configured and entered new passwords, and now
what he needs is a stiff drink at Hooters.

But since duty calls, he picks up his sack
full of Game Boys, Nintendos, and Sims,
and batteries, triple A, B, and C,
also D, spilling over the rims.

Wistful, he thinks about long ago Christmases:
blocks and Play-Doh and books and stuffed toys,
that were played with or read from or cuddled, but didn't
have green flashing lights, or make noise.

The only power needed was imagination.
The toys could be knights and their vassals,
or princesses, monsters, or aliens from space,
or skyscrapers, houses, or castles.

A merrier Christmas than Santa's I wish you:
one that's completely unwired.
May you go to bed early on this Christmas eve
because NO assembly's required.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

I'll write columns here whenever I really want to share an idea with you and can find time to write them . If you want to be notified when a new one is up, send me an e-mail and include "My Word's Worth" in the subject line.