I spent my Christmas vacation amid the furious flurry of flying frilly bows and paper, knee deep in discarded toy boxes with instructions in everything from German to Portuguese. The destructions, I mean instructions, were also supposed to be in English. If they were, it was some dialect I failed to comprehend. Most of the day on Christmas Eve was spent taking my parents on errands and a little bit of this and that. On Christmas day, I spent the majority of my time putting together toys.

These days, most toys have all kinds of bells and whistles and come in all kinds of states of disassembly. There is no doubt in my mind that a body might need an engineering degree to figure out how to put together a plastic toy car, but there is also no doubt that I was not so lucky as to be well-qualified. After I barely made a "C" in Geometry, I decided not to pursue an engineering degree.

I also have an instruction-reading deficiency that I have been coping with for most of my adult life. It is a deficiency in as much as I generally don't read the directions at all until I can't figure out what happened. Besides, any man worth his salt can put together a simple toy with little more than a screwdriver, a hammer and a pair of pliers, right?

The toy car came with wheels, hubcaps, axles, washers, four sizes of screws, bolts, horse-shoe clips, stickers, push pins, axle caps and two big plastic things that I have yet to identify. I was pleased to have a couple of young members of the extended family to assist me in my adventure, which generally led the project to move along, especially after we learned that one of us could and would read the directions. However, I can say that it still took the better part of two hours, a bottle of aspirin, three medium-sized plastic bandages, a box of tools and an extra dose of patience to get it done.

After errantly putting washer A in the slot reserved for washer C, I soon realized that I was in for a real experience. Tab Q and hole Z wouldn't line up until I smacked the axle (part D) with a hammer repeatedly. In doing so, I also managed to smash my finger (part R-3) and find myself in need of a bandage (not included). It was then that I realized that a Christmas of assembling toys is no fun at all for the assemblers, only for the recipients. I can just hear the Chinese factory owners' evil laughs as they ship packages that represent the mechanisms of their evil empire to unaware Americans — mostly innocent father and uncle types who get stuck putting these things together. Once I finished the car, the children were still ripping packages to beat the band, a good portion of which still had to be screwed, hammered, fitted with batteries and otherwise snapped together with the greatest of care.

I must say that I seriously considered joining the local elf union (ELF Local No. 245) to protect myself from unsafe working conditions. However, I learned that Santa Claus has a clause of his own in his toy-delivery contract that forbids unionizing of free agent elves working with previously delivered toys. It seems the elves are only protected while working within the confines of the North Pole compound. In addition, in what I considered racial discrimination in its lowest form, it would appear that I was disallowed from joining based partially on my height. Since no elves of my stature exist and that those of us with rounded ears are frowned upon by the yuletide powers that be, my application would have been soundly rejected. I did consider a protest, but my appeal could only be heard in the nameless region known by the misnomer 'The North Pole,' according to the unforgiving e-mail I received from Claus Inc. and the ELF Local for my region.

Lacking necessary airfare for such a trip, I instead slogged through the duty with the slightly scurrilous, but workman-like attitude of my forefathers — one of whom spent the last thirty years of his life sitting about 26 inches from a 25-inch black-and-white television with poor reception, all the while wearing the same pair of bibbed overalls. I'm not sure if he ever had a job. But that's another story for another time.

Anyway, I also had the pleasure of assembling a rocking horse, a toy mailbox and a tricycle. Somewhere in between the rocking horse and the tricycle I slipped out to have Christmas dinner with the rest of the family, although there was little time for rest. On the bright side, having the afternoon already booked up with toy assembly did keep me out of trouble for most of the day.

It also kept me from consuming my typically large quantities of Christmas food and falling asleep in an easy chair in front of a television showing re-runs of "The Christmas Story" back-to-back. Even so, I still haven't gotten my own BB gun, despite years of waiting. Instead, one of my brothers-in-law evidently was granted his wish for a Red Rider this year, it came true in the form of a collection of vintage BB guns from the 20s through the 50s. Maybe when I get his age I'll be responsible enough to not shoot my eye out. Anyway, I ended up getting a bottle of nice perfume and a sore finger from my aforementioned hammer whack. Merry Christmas.

Even so, I did manage to get all the toys put together just in time to put the children to bed. They can play with them for the next few days or so anyway, at least until the wheels fall off or I figure out what all those extra pieces were for. Oh well, maybe they'll wish for pre-assembled toys next Christmas. I know I will.

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