Maybe you should just . . . drop it (from a high place and onto a hard surface).

The other day I heard Jesse give one of his loud, drawn-out, and frustrated “UUUUGGHHH”s. Then he sighed, “Abe, do you know what ‘ugh’ means?”

Abe: “What does it mean, bud?”

“It means something’s broken.”

I was afraid it meant that.

See. It’s like I said. His intentions aren’t bad. He doesn’t want to break things . . . necessarily. It frustrates him nearly as much as it frustrates me (well, no, it frustrates me much more). It is just that, in his zeal to discover – things often end up . . . broken. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the rather telling suggestion he made to me yesterday (as I attempted to take the removable base off of a toy car for him):

Jesse watched me eagerly as I struggled to get it apart. Finally he said, “Why’s it not coming off!?” Then the anxiousness to see how exactly it all looked taken apart became too much and he suggested, “Mom? Do you think maybe you need to . . .” Here he paused, as if unsure whether or not to share his unconventional methods of solving such problems with me. Then he continued, “Do you think maybe you should . . . drop it?”

No. I did not think we should “drop it” nor did I think we should throw it, hurl it, bang it against a hard surface or hit it with another hard object. Somehow I need to impress upon his mind appropriate verses inappropriate means to an end. Somehow. Or, you know, if even I could make the ends not seem so absolutely necessary.