Smile-breaks
Three Parts – Anyone Could Put it Together
The clock had three parts. Anyone could put it together. Anyone. I sliced the packing tape on the brown box, pulled a white box out of the brown box and scooped up the Styrofoam peanuts that fell all over the floor.
The white box was all taped up. I sliced the all the tapes and slid two Styrofoam molds out of the box. The Styrofoam molds were taped together in three places. The tape was scrunched up so’s you had to be careful or you’d cut the parts they were holding. After I cut the tape, the parts inside them wouldn’t let go so the molds dangled this way and that - together.
Uh-oh. The parts are s’posed to be red and yellow and blue. Look brown to me. Sort of like packing tape brown, come to think of it.
Sure is. Packing tape. Actually, peel-off tape. I took a shot at it.
Wow! It came off in one piece! First time that ever happened. Underneath the brown peel-off tape was a beautiful luminous cherry red rectangle.
The other side of the rectangle was taped, too, but this tape was stuck. I couldn’t get ahold of a corner to peel. I tried the other corners. I scratched up and down both sides. My fingernails got full of itty-bitty pieces of tape. Finally I got a corner and started separating a swath of tape from the lustrous red surface.
Didn’t get far. The peeling tape went off track. I tried to restart it three times, and then a fourth… Ahhh! H-e-e-r-e we go... Peeling slowly. Peeling straightly.
I got another inch off.
The second part was the same. On one side, the tape came off in one piece. On the other side, I caught a glimpse of beautiful lemon meringue yellow as I pulled a centimeter of tape from the surface. But I stuck to it and got all the tape off and I only left four scratches total.
Next was the easy part. The battery. I thought.
There was this black string where the battery was supposed to go. I didn’t know what to do with it so I pulled it. Nothing happened. It was permanently attached. I checked the pluses and minuses and shoved the battery in.
It popped out. No matter what I did, the battery popped back out at me. When I finally got it to stay, it sure didn’t seem very secure, but it didn’t pop out so I wasn’t going to touch it or breathe on it or…
And then I remembered the hands. Clocks are s’posed to have hands. I found them in a slim plastic tube – kind’a like a traveling toothbrush holder. I popped the top, tipped the case and the hands fell right out. Blue rectangular hands.
I put the hour hand on the tiny grommet-like thing sticking out of the red rectangle that was the body of the clock. It fell off. I put it back on. It fell off. I pushed it on as hard as I could without breaking it. Bent it a little, but darn! I wanted to get this clock together!
The tenth time, it stayed. Yay!!! I put the minute hand over the hour hand. It fell off. The hour hand fell off on top of it. I must’ve tried twenty times to get those dang hands to stay put.
Hmmmm. What’s this? A tiny blue circle piece of metal was hiding in the plastic case where the hands had been. Must be what keeps the hands from popping off.
Today the blue circle is still in the plastic case. It’s twisted a little. The screwdriver bent it. It was tight against both sides of the case and I couldn’t cut the case and I wanted to finish this thing and all I could find was a screwdriver and I was wondering...
Does anyone out there know how to put a three part clock together?