Tinkertoys

My son and I built this yesterday — he has a cold, and hasn't been himself, and instead of his usual self-driven endeavors, he wanted me to build something with him. (Or for him.) So we sat together and watched old cartoons, while I let my mind wander among the brightly colored plastic. (Ordinarily, I might have preferred the wooden Tinkertoys, but I was afraid they'd expand with the humidity and begin to splinter.)

You can't really tell just by looking at it, but each of those blue wheels is a moving gear that turns another, and another, and another — there are thirteen in all. (He insisted we use every last blue wheel we could find.)

I don't think I would ever have thought to build a system of gears using Tinkertoys — this was an idea my son had discovered completely on his own. (I was only borrowing it.) It was more by chance than by design, to be sure, and it was nothing quite so elaborate as this, but it was impressive just the same. He is learning to let the process of creation carry him along unexpected paths, to peer around unfamiliar corners.