Copyright (C) Ronald E. Madsen, Jr., October 2, 2010 – All Rights Reserved
When she was about 5 years old, my daughter and I went to Sears one evening. We spent most of our time in the tools and equipment section of the store. I noticed that she seemed very interested in all the different kinds of tools – pliers, wrenches, multi-purpose drivers. After answering her questions and looking at several different Craftsman tool kits with her, we decided to buy a rather large set – for her.
When she got home, she and her brother, age 7, opened the packing box and put all the plastic bags of bright, shiny sockets, handles and drivers on the living room floor. They noticed that the black carrying case had numbers molded into it, showing the different sizes for the parts of the set. It was like a puzzle for them, and they worked together assembling it, reading the markings on the different pieces and placing them carefully into the proper locations in the carrying case, until each one was in its rightful place.
They made a puzzle that had a purpose far beyond the fun they had while building it. My little daughter and her brother learned to work together. They learned about math, fractions and sorting. It was fun, and they laughed and smiled as they worked. And when they had completed the work, my daughter studied for a moment, and then snapped some of the parts together to make a socket wrench, and other parts to make a Phillips screwdriver. She smiled. She talked about the set, and all the things she thought she could do with her new toys.
In the days that followed, her older brothers came to her and asked to borrow the set so they could fix their bikes and other toys. She helped them get the right wrench handles, extender bars and sockets to do the repairs. Upon completion, she made sure that all the tools were carefully dis-assembled, and that the parts were returned to their correct spaces in the carrying case. She was proud of her toys, and she was happy to know special things about them, and to be helpful.
She was happy to be learning. She understood that her toys were not useless, made of cheap plastic, intended to last only during childhood. Her shining, metal toys could be used to fix real things. They were heavy, and they were strong. They could be used to build what she wanted. Her toys were real, and they might very well last a lifetime. They just might help teach her how to be free.
Today, years later, the little girl has become a wise, thoughtful and caring young woman. She enjoys science fiction, old and new. She excels at math and physics. She studies the writings of C. S. Lewis. Most evenings, we talk about all these topics, along with love, freedom and un-caused first causes.
Freedom is found along roads of discipline and precision…